Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Archive 16

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Move Chicago and Philadelphia back?

After looking at the history and page moves of these pages here, it's pretty clear that there really wasn't solid consensus for these moves-just the luck and folly of circumstance. The history of discussions on this page shows that there is no concrete definition of "exceptional" to set as guidelines for our "exceptions". Rather then promote discussion and generations of true consensus to change this guideline, the presence of Chicago and Philadelphia at their current location only encourages the silly game of "exception hunting" and trying to hopefully sneak another page move under the radar. I think we should have a serious discussion about the benefits (or disadvantages) of moving both cities back to the City, State convention. I think discussing it on this page is more fruitful then just proposing the page moves and debating it on the city page. However I will drop a note on both those pages as well as a general Village Pump note to get more input.AgneCheese/Wine 05:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Agne, there's been serious discussion of changes to the conventions which would allow for some plausible rules about what cities get to be at "City" and what at "City, State." This discussion always goes precisely nowhere, largely because those of you who want to keep everything at "City, State," well, want to keep everything at "City, State." There's no actual room for compromise here, and given that there's a lot of people with fairly strong views on both sides of the question, that means there is, so far as I can tell, no room for consensus. As such, I'd rather keep Chicago and Philadelphia where they are as a reminder to everyone that this issue is not settled. If they got moved back, then all that would happen is that we'd still not be able to agree on any general modification of the rule. I.e., those of you who like "City, State" for all cities would have a conclusive victory, achieved by the back door. I can see why you want to do this, but I can't imagine why those of us who want to change the rule would support it. john k 05:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
There is room for compromise, there just hasn't been compelling reasons or alternatives given yet. Furthermore, while there is maybe 6-9 "regulars" on this page, there is a larger community out there that could be swayed and convinced. You don't need to sway only us "regulars" to achieve consensus if the better interest of the community is served with your changes. Second, I'm not sure about your logic for keeping Chicago and Philadelphia where they are. There is always debate about the inclusion of blogs as reliable sources. Should we allow links to Perez Hilton.com on articles so that we can remind people that the issue is not settled? Thirdly, this is not a back door attempt to achieve a desired result. If a desired result was all I wanted then I would patiently wait till some of the City Only folks are on wiki-break or leave the project and then submit a pagemove request and hope that 5 days pass without much fan fair and sneak it through. However I respect the convention and see value in discussing the matter on the fuller scale of the convention rather then game a system or stir up a "faux" sense of consensus. AgneCheese/Wine 01:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd also like to add that, whatever the consensus on those moves, it's no worse than the original consensus for the U.S. city naming guidelines as a whole, which were decided upon by a vote of 3 to 2 in 2001, or some such. In both cases, the power of inertia seems to be the key element here. john k 06:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
No, per previous arguments. There's no evidence that these are not the primary topics to belong at these names. -- nae'blis 06:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Obviously Primary Topic (just like disambiguation) is not the be-all-end-all consideration for naming conventions. Take Cheddar, Gouda, Newark and Cork as examples. AgneCheese/Wine 01:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the talk pages for Philadelphia and Chicago be marked with {{move}} and listed on WP:RM, with discussion directed to here, as this is essentially a discussion for action to move those article pages? TLK'in 09:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

That template would say that "It has been proposed below that CITY be renamed and moved to CITY, STATE." Has such a proposal been made? (And doesn't all this use of the passive voice make your skin crawl?:-))--BillFlis 10:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
No. The issue appears to be more of a question rather then a request. My gut says that this is probably not yet a request to move. Vegaswikian 17:00, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Your gut is right. As this is a naming convention issue I believe it is is more fruitful to have a serious discussion on the matter and its affect on the convention rather then put up a move request and hope to sneak it through. While the input of the editors to those articles is obviously valued (and sought for by my notice on their talk pages), the issue is bigger then just those two city articles and deserves a broader discussion then what a page move request can offer. AgneCheese/Wine 00:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Something that we always seem to lose sight of

From Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places), Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

Followed by In addition to following the naming conventions it is also important to follow the linking conventions. Following consistent conventions in both naming and linking makes it more likely that links will lead to the right place. Vegaswikian 02:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I really don't understand the point of the above - It is only normal that we should use Danzig rather than Gdańsk if the former is the version that most English-speakers recognise. It is also normal to link things correctly - but the point of this is also rather vague. Was this posted in regard to any practice in particular? THEPROMENADER 07:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Basically the naming convention clearly states considerations in choosing article names. We hear terms like primary use, or pre disambiguation or common name in the discussions here but those terms are not used in the introduction to the guideline itself. My thinking is that if we were to focus on the one guideline, maybe we can move to a strong consensus. Vegaswikian 08:04, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
On what? THEPROMENADER 08:36, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
On the guidance of the guideline. Let's go with most easily recognized, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, and linking easy and second nature. If we have consensus, it could be for the US and the world in general. Vegaswikian 18:08, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but from this we cannot discern what you want consensus upon. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 19:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, the issue that is the current hot point. 'City', 'City, State' or to be complete 'City (State)' and to use it in all cases or only for disambiguation. Vegaswikian 21:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, we won't be coming to any thing conclusive - let alone consensus - with vague interjections like that. It seems as though you are trying to say: "follow the rules; they say it is my way, eh!" - without your saying what "your way" is! Anyhoo - never mind my poking fun, just discuss objectively please. THEPROMENADER 22:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Vegaswikian, I think you're misunderstanding or misrepresenting the intent and applicability of that guideline. This guideline is about whether one name is more recognizable than another to English-speakers, meaning a foreign term should not be used unless it is more recognizable than the English term. It has nothing to do with whether San Francisco or San Francisco, California is "more recognizable". This is yet another after-the-fact rationalization manufactured to support the "city, state" convention. --Serge 19:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Serge, did I make any statement about how to apply the guidance? NO! I simply quoted the guidance from the naming convention that we are dealing with. I said nothing to support one side or the other. On the other hand you have again shown your unwillingness to have any kind of a discussion. You have decided to assume that everyone who has not agreed with you in the past has an agenda that will not accept compromise and consensus. I think your reply clearly shows that you know that if we followed the simple directions in the guideline itself, then your arguments may not hold up. If taking the discussion back to the simple words in the guideline is wrong, then I plead guilty. I'll also plead guilty to quoting the guideline for this page rather then every other guideline. I guess trying to start the discussion again using this guideline is wrong. If that is the case, then those who are saying that consensus is impossible may be right. Vegaswikian 21:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Neither of you seem to be making any statement about anything concrete at all. THEPROMENADER 22:08, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Vegas, I don't see the relevance of the guideline you quoted to the issue of whether the article title about a U.S. city named Cityname with no dab issues should be Cityname or Cityname, Statename. To see any relevance I think requires misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the intent and/or scope of the guideline. --Serge 23:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Without seeming rude, the above seemed to be, like many positions in this argument, an effort to select and/or 'interpret' "proofs" supporting a decision already-made. Remain objective, not biased please !
FWIW, my position has changed tenfold through reasoning - when I first jumped into the debate I thought the (impossible) whole administrative chain to country should be used for place articles - then I was for "city, state" before seeing the real fault and motive with that formulation/habit. All is quite clear now, which makes much of the present and past debate (my own participation included) look rather predictable and silly.
Serge, no matter how 'right' you are, it is the majority that will win - and the majority of contributors feel quite comfortable with their local "city, state" practice attached to the (thousands of) "city" articles they have contributed to. Quite an uphill battle, eh? My only point of disdain with this is that majority is not always paramount to reason. THEPROMENADER 07:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Why this discussion is going in circles

Watching this discussion over the past (year?) has been both a frustrating and troubling experience. If everyone based their discussion criteria/motives on reason, it would be very possible to come to a quick and unanimously accepted solution. Yet this page is filled with arguments that are not based on reason, rather motivated by a personal preference whose motives, to date, only I seem to have tried to discern. Anyhow, meaning no offence for the term, the more dishonest "dead-ender" arguments/methods of argument I've observed are the following:

  • Biased 'fact'-finding. Namely finding any and every reason supporting a pre-selected "preferred" methodology (and the opposite for all opposing methods) - this is quite the opposite of reason.
  • "Interpreting" pre-existing yet irrelevent Wiki rules as "proof" for the above. Many here are citing Wiki conventions that were never written with "City, State", "City", or even naming conventions in mind. This is both pointless and obscure - if the rule already specifically applies to the topic one is discussing, its language will already make this clear for all.
  • Mis-'naming' practices. Anything outside of an article subject's proper name is not its name. Anything outside an article's name is... normally pointless in the title, unless it is disambiguation. Yet a few would insist that their title add-ons are not disambiguation! Is the add-on the name itself? Then why is it there? This is a key 'around the bush' log-jam of an argument.
  • Narrow self-interest. Few wikipedians contributing to articles about the places where/near where they live seem to understand that the articles they are titling are not only for the eyes of their own countrymen.

The only solidly-reasoned arguments I have seen to date are:

  • Too many articles already use this convention (linking). Mind you, this is an "is it worth all the work" argument, and not one for a convention itself per se.

I don't want to be cynical, but unless we get around to some real and honest reasoning, it's going to be "majority rules!" that rules the roost on this convention - and it may just end up that way anyway. It's obvious that if a majority of English-speakers use something similar to "city, state" that it will become a standard - but the explanation of this is more reasons of comfort than anything else.

What's silliest in all this is that every country (save the tiniest) in the world uses some sort of "local" disambiguation, but only English articles are disambiguated (though argued "not") in this way. This is very narrow-minded - and perhaps even a tad xenephobic (or xene-ignorant) - from my point of view, and perhaps also that of any other "English-foreigner". THEPROMENADER 10:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Contrary to policy

Article names should reflect the correct Chilean spelling, however, it may be advisable to include a redirect page using the common English spelling of a name to aid users in searching. For example in writing about the city of Pucón, the article would be named Pucón, Chile and have a redirect page of Pucon, Chile or even just Pucon (without the accents) which are not used in English.

This, as phrased, is contrary to policy: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly recognized by readers than the English form. (WP:NC#Use English words) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Chile

The current Chilean policy includes this:

Give preference to naming articles about settlements as City, Chile to help telegraph to readers that the article is:
  • about a settlement and,
  • in the country of Chile.

Shouldn't unique Chilean city names not be disambiguated with , Chile? --Serge 18:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a poll about Chilean city naming here. --Serge 18:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Criteria for exceptions

First, I see no need to specify criteria for exceptions in order to note the fact that exceptions are allowed. Stating what is already true for the sake of clarity shouldn't even require consensus.

Second, if we do specify criteria, we need to be clear whether we're specifying criteria to identify cities that definitely are exceptions (if it meets the criteria, then it must be under city only), or if we're specifying the criteria to identify those cities that can be exceptions.

In any case, if such criteria is to be specified, the choices seem to be:

a) Any city on the AP list.
b) Any city with an international airport and no ambiguity issues.
c) Any city with a pro football, baseball or basketball team and no ambiguity issues.
d) Any city with a population of one million or more and no ambiguity issues.
e) (a) plus all state capitols (w/o ambiguity issues).
f) (b) plus all state capitols (w/o ambiguity issues).
g) (c) plus all state capitols (w/o ambiguity issues).
h) (a), (b), (c) plus all state capitols (w/o ambiguity issues).
i) (a), (b), (c), (d) plus all state capitols (w/o ambiguity issues).
j) Any city without ambiguity issues.

Any other candidates for criteria that identifies exceptions to the guideline? --Serge 00:28, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

As an FYI for any new users to the discussions, some of these are rehashes from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Summary of Discussion. I do think an area to start is trying to define what would make Chicago and Philadelphia "exceptional"-outside of the circumstance and opportunity of their page move request. AgneCheese/Wine 01:12, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

What makes Chicago and Philadelphia "exceptional"? Take your pick from the above list: a, b, c, d, or j. --Serge 01:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
What makes them exceptional is that they got moved because few people were paying attention. Jeez, has this issue come round again? I thought we'd put a stake though its heart last year.
—wwoods 02:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

What serious encyclopaedic publication makes "exceptions" from its own established naming practices? THEPROMENADER 07:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a good point, but what serious encyclopaedic publication is a collaborative effort in the sense that Wikipedia is? Ne'er-the-less, this is why I think the naming convention should be: use the most common name, and, if you can't, dab with contextual information in parenthesis that is appropriate given whatever the ambiguity issue is. No exceptions. For example: Cork (city) is there because it conflicts with a usage of cork that is not a city. --Serge 07:08, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
There are occasional needs for exceptions, such as "New York City" vs. "New York, New York". There was no need for an exception with Chicago, it was just more popular with the editors who participated in the most recent poll. As ThePromenader says, reference materials usually favor consistency, and so we shouldn't encourage exceptions. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 07:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
One needs to remember that the requested rename process has a built in bias. The notice is placed in the article to be moved so that you have a large number of editors interested in the article. They may not be as concerned with following a guideline as they are in making their favorite article appear more important. The style used in the encyclopedia is an important fact in its acceptance. So having random variations is not desirable since it makes it look less professional. Vegaswikian 08:20, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
I also agree that having variations in place-naming practices is unprofessional - but this already exists in a VERY widespread manner between English and "English-foreign" articles; please see my comment about this above.
Bias is correct, but nothing is automatic; the bulders make the "built-in" bias. Most of the time this is because those contributing to "their farvourite (place) article" live there, and because of this tendency, the reasons why they the same seek the comfort of naming their (placename) article as they do in everyday speech is understandable - but not acceptable to any serious publication.
Yes, the contributors decide what goes into Wikipedia, but the same are writing for Wikipedia readers, not themselves. Anyone looking for, say, 19th-century trade routes and ports between Port-au-Prince, Jersey City, New Jersey and Skagen will notice the inconsistancy in Wiki's place-naming. This is simply not serious.
The "city, state" naming convention may be dominant in US-based articles, but compared to "the rest of the world" articles, not at all. I'd really like to see an end to this self-interested narrow-mindedness. THEPROMENADER 09:58, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
So why don't you propose a consistent worldwide city guideline that applies to any city in the world, so we can ditch the inconsistent country-specific guidelines? --Serge 14:23, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm game! Anyone else? Where could this sort of discussion take place? How could we bring wide (and I mean WIDE) attention to it? THEPROMENADER 16:17, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
How about this? --Serge 18:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Serge said: Cork (city) is there because it conflicts with a usage of cork that is not a city. is simply not a fair representation of the discussion. Cork, Ireland is a disambig page, particularly between Cork (city) and County Cork. But it appeared that Cork, Cork was inaccurate as the city is surrounded by, but not part of, the county. It is exactly the sort of exception that does not fit within any guidelines. --Scott Davis Talk 23:20, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, various reasons were given as to why it should be at Cork (city). I noted the reason I voted for it. I don't remember if anyone else cited that reason as well. --Serge 23:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Guinnog was the admin who moved Cork to Cork (city). Here is where I presented the argument, and where he states he agrees with it. --Serge 23:43, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, let's not take one rare example to justify a whole convention. Discuss from the major base please, and with reason. THEPROMENADER 01:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Text

I see by this continued example of reversion to his non-consensus text that Serge is incapable of compromise, and unwilling to discuss in bad faith. There is (it will be found in the archives) a reason for the exception at New York City; there is no special reason for Chicago and Philadelphia. We could do with stating the first; we should not specify the others; consensus will change in twelve months time. But I have restored the condition of two days ago, and will defend it. I do not see his claimed discussion.

I do not intend to answer any more of his posts, except to strongly oppose proposals which are, as most of his are, bad policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Why so huffy? The July 17 changes to the U.S. guideline were made after over a week of discussion here on this talk page involving a handful of interested parties, and to which you or anyone else was free to contribute. Once the initial change was made, a few more changes and tweaks were made, involving several editors, including User:Vegaswikian, User:Polaron, User:Agne27 and myself. Among the four of us at least, and anyone else who was observing but not participating (and thus consented by not objecting), we apparently had consensus on the compromise wording that resulted on July 17. Now three days later you seek to change that, without any discussion whatsoever, and barring being able to have your way, choose to revert all that collaborative effort. Such behavior is not very Wikipedian. You are certainly free to raise your objections here, which you only now finally have done in this section, and see if there is any consensus for your personal preferences. --Serge 20:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Now, as to your actual objection, I don't see the relevance of having to specify the reasons any particular exception is an exception. The fact is, those cities listed are the current exceptions to the guideline, regardless of the reasons. --Serge 20:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
The discussion has now broadened beyond the initial four, so that previous decision doesn't bind the current discussion. Regarding the assertion that three ctities "are the current exceptions" mistates the case. There are undoubtedly numeorus exceptions, due either to intent or to ignorance of the naming convention. We don't list all of the exceptions because there's no need to. Listing one exception, which was made with a specific reason is helpful. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
We had a discussion that lasted over a week (and to which your comment above would have been constructive and appreciated) and resulted in a relatively minor consensus change on July 17. Now that we have a new discussion going about a single consistent worldwide convention, you want to reopen that relatively minor change to the U.S. guideline? Genuine efforts have been made to do this correctly. This seems disruptive. --Serge 20:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, so the consensus only lasted a couple of days. Some folks are busy doing other things and don't notice that changes are being proposed until they are implemented, at which point they get involved. Previous decisions don't bind current editors. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Quite right; as indeed I didn't> I will try another wording, with NYC. This wording is objectionable both in enshrining Chicago and Philadelphia in the guideline, and as redundancy; we say there are exceptions on top. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Added another trial paragraph asserting lack of consensus on either of two major proposals. As far as I'm concerned, it's a statement of fact; but if someone wants to take the new paragraph out, fine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:06, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Fine, but let's work on the new consensus version here, not on the project page itself. --Serge 21:10, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Not acceptable, unless we go back to the stable consensus of saying nothing other than the {{Wikipedia subcat guideline}} tag does about exceptions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The trial paragraph is:

There is no present consensus either to apply the canonical form to all United States cities without exception, or to allow a limited number of exceptions for "world-class" cities.

I believe both statements to be factual. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

PMAnderson proposal

Sigh, okay, here we go again. But please read all the stuff that was rehashed about this starting with the top of this page (Section United States).

This is the current version, the July 17 consensus version:

Changes have been proposed for this guideline; see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements).
The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina). Cities that have deviated from canonical form include New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

PMAnderson's has proposed this version (which I reverted pending discussion and consensus achievment here):

Changes have been proposed for this guideline; see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements).
The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina). Exceptions can be made for special cases; for instance, New York City, because New York, New York is Manhattan.
There is no present consensus either to apply the canonical form to all United States cities without exception, or to allow a limited number of exceptions for "world-class" cities.
A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

Discussion

There is an assertion in the archives that that is the reason for the exception at New York City; there is no special reason for Chicago and Philadelphia, which were done quite recently. We could do with stating the first; we should not specify the others; consensus will change in twelve months time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Again, I think this a propositoin that is best suited to local, but not international, use. Wiki is not U.S.-only. Imagine someone trying to pick out a city in a certain country from a disambig list when he doesn't know the states/counties of that country. Plus not all countries use the same local method. Do all disambiguation pages organise their placenames into countries? THEPROMENADER 21:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

As for the statements about consensus; I believe them to be factual, and I have found stating the actual condition of a guideline useful on other guidelines. But if they are not consensus, that's fine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I leave this for others: Serge's fourth reversion puts him beyond the limits of good faith; he knows better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

No Wikilawerying, please. I've made a good faith effort to discuss all my proposed changes, and achieve consensus, here on the talk page for at least a week (see top of this talk page) before applying them to the project page (see recent history of project page).
Now PMAnderson comes along and starts making unilateral changes without any discussion at all. What's up with that? Regardless of the merits of the changes, or how one may feel about them, I hope others can recognize that I have followed a good faith process, despite my four (oops) reverts of him today, and PMAnderson has not. In the mean time, he continues to make his changes to the project page without discussing here.
Would somebody else please revert PMAnderson's changes to the latest version that was achieved by discussion, consensus building and collaboration (i.e., the final version from July 27, before PMAnderson started making his unilateral changes)? Thanks. --Serge 22:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
You've already broken 3RR, Serge: but I won't push it if you put it back. Your alleged consensus is flatly denied here, and not by me. The entire sentence is an attempt by you, acting as always as a single-purpose account, to make permanent chance majorities at Chicago and Philadelphia - dishonest, and in someone who complains so loudly of the status quo, dishonorable. I have made several different efforts at wording which I found acceptable; you have persistently reverted to the same wording. I have given up for now, and merely marked your point-of-view pushing as disputed, which it is and has been. Please stop lying; the location of Pacific Grove, California isn't worth it.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I am quite serious in offering to help move Pacific Grove, and it alone, if this will end your incessant disruptive campaign, here and elsewhere. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Pacific Grove? The locus is more likely La Jolla, San Diego, California. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd give him any one example; but that's the one he always uses, so I thought it meant something to him. If it's La Jolla, what's he worried about? We don't say how to treat neighborhoods. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It's always difficult to determine if actual consensus has been achieved, and I never claimed that I had. I claimed I made a good faith effort to achieve consensus, for over a week, and had good reason to believe that I had, before I applied any changes to the guideline. You just made your changes unilaterally without any discussion here, much less proposing something and waiting a few days at least to see what others thinks. Anway, all this bickering is moot if we can come up with a single consistent worldwide naming convention for cities. --Serge 23:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Re-reading the page, I don't see where there was ever a consensus for Serge's proposed change. I suggest we restore the previous version pending a re-write of the naming convention. Any new rules we develop will still have exceptions so if we feel a need to specifically address exceptions we can do so as part of that revision. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Please do; two editors answering Serge's reverts will be more convincing than one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:51, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I wish to acknowledge Serge's more reasonable position above; thanks. Unless there is objection, or someone does it first, I propose to restore the consensus text, omitting any sentence about exceptions, tomorrow. After all, it remains either redundant with the guideline tag, or an effort to endorse Chicago and Philadelphia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

United States

The current guideline for the United States is stated as follows:

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).
A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

This wording ignores the fact that there can be and are notable exceptions. While the acceptability of exceptions should go without saying, many seem to not be aware of this fact, and are mislead by the current wording. So, I propose adding the following as a second paragraph:

Of course, exceptions are allowed. In particular, cities which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, can have titles consisting of only the city name (e.g., New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago).

If you agree or object, please state your reasoning. --Serge 22:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Here we go again. No, those of us who generally oppose these changes are not mislead by the current wording. We are simply looking for some objective criteria to use for these changes that does not result in confusion for editors and readers. Part of the problem is that the settlement names for places in the world are different and this causes more confusion then the US names. Right now the US has a clear and precise definition. Why mess that up for no gain in usability or understanding? The biggest US problem is probably cities in other countries that match the names of ones in the US and are not dab pages under the unqualified name. As the discussion on Syracuse, among others, showed, it is not always clear as to what the most significant place sharing a certain name is. Vegaswikian 22:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
It might be "clear and concise", but it's not accurate. Are you suggesting that being "clear and concise" should trump accuracy? It may not be misleading to you, but the current wording is misleading to those less familiar with Wikipedia naming conventions, and, in particular, the fact that these are conventions, not rules written in stone, and exceptions are always allowed. As with all other article names, if and when an actual ambiguity issue is uncovered, that is when you disambiguate, not before "just in case". --Serge 23:26, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Accurate? Actually the current system, your proposal and the use common name policy are not concerned with being accurate. Take a place like Wappinger, New York. If we wanted to be accurate the article would be Town of Wappinger which is the official name. Then lets consider a name like Poughkeepsie. The Town of Poughkeepsie article is under the name of Poughkeepsie (town), New York. The City of Poughkeepsie is titled Poughkeepsie (city), New York with a redirect from Poughkeepsie and Poughkeepsie, New York. Then there is Poughkeepsie, Arkansas a place with 715 people which may really be simply Poughkeepsie since I can't find a source that says otherwise. Any solution needs to balance the real name of a place, the common name, convention, standards, common sense, clarity so that people know quickly is they are at the wrong page, conflicting settlement naming conventions and who knows what else. Vegaswikian 00:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
That's a red herring. Has anybody even proposed moving Wappinger or Poughkeepsie ever? If there is any significant debate at all as to which place should get the unqualified name, then they should be disambiguated. If one place is obviously the primary topic, it should get the unqualified name. It seems like some of the people who oppose loosening the guidelines are afraid of a flood of move requests for no good reason. I don't think people will suddenly propose moving tons of obscure US place articles. Why not simply use the "city+state" as the default and let move requests be debated on their own merits? --Polaron | Talk 00:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Could someone with some history in this discussion please summarize each side's arguments, or point to a page where this has been done? I have been interested in joining this discussion for quite a while but have always been scared off by the "circular argument" warning and the pages and pages of archives. It seems to me that there should be a single convention for all countries (for simplicity's and consistency's sake), and that disambiguation should only occur when necessary (as is the guideline elsewhere on WP). But the length of this discussion makes me think that there must be compelling arguments to the contrary; I'd very much like to understand both sides to see if I have anything to offer. --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 13:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Toby, as far as I can tell, the main argument for always using "city, state" even when there is no known ambiguity issue with city alone is that "city, state" is not really a disambiguation - that this is how most if not all U.S. cities are most commonly known. While that may very well be true for cities like Paris, Texas, I find that argument in general to be ludicrous. Another argument is that while it may not be the way most cities are most commonly known, it is a common way to refer to them, and, so is a legitimate way to name them. That justification, coupled with some kind of apparent desire to have the same naming format used for all U.S. cities, is what really fuels the desire for "City, State" naming for all cities. Personally, I think it's very useful to know for any subject covered in Wikipedia, not just for city names, that the name is (or is not) the most commonly used to refer to that subject. Thus Paris should be at Paris, and San Francisco at San Francisco, while Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine makes sense. By putting all city names at City, State we lose that distinction and related information about name usage. That just seems very "unWikipedian" to me. --Serge 18:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, then I can see why there is some contention: If I am talking to another person in Colorado, Wyoming or eastern Kansas, I refer to the city where I live as "Greeley." However, if I am talking to someone in Maine, I'd say "Greeley, Colorado." But when I say "Greeley, Colorado" — in my mind, anyway — it's a short way of saying "Greeley, which is located in the state of Colorado" because I assume that the fellow from Maine knows where Colorado is. If we were to say that "Greeley, Colorado" is the name of the city, then shouldn't Washington be renamed Washington State, since that is the most commonly used term among English speakers (as a means of differentiating it from Washington, D.C.)?
Take this example of verbiage about my neck of the woods:

I live in Greeley, Colorado. Greeley, Colorado is a moderate-sized city about an hour north of Denver, Colorado and home to the University of Northern Colorado. The populated area actually consists of three cities: Greeley, Colorado; Evans, Colorado; and Garden City, Colorado, which came into existence as a place where liquor could be purchased during the years when Greeley, Colorado had prohibition laws on the books. People in the region often refer to the tri-city area, consisting of Greeley, Colorado; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Loveland, Colorado, all of which are within 45 minutes' drive of each other, though a fourth city, Windsor, Colorado — which is situated between Loveland, Colorado and Greeley, Colorado — has experienced dramatic growth in the last decade. Greeley, Colorado was the fastest growing city in the United States a few years back, and its population, as well as that of Loveland, Colorado and Windsor, Colorado, continues to grow.

My guess is that this sounds awkward even to someone who is completely unfamiliar with Colorado; the only necessary use of "city, state" would be in the first sentence. That's because the state isn't part of the name of the city; it's only used when the listener or reader needs more information about the location. --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 20:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
That's how I see it. In fact, if I had my druthers the disambiguation information (the state) would be in parenthesis like for any article, so we would have San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), and Portland (Maine). But many people argue that the natural way to disambiguate a U.S. city is with , Statename. But that argument is based on the assumption that City, State is a disambiguated form, yet people say it should be used even when disambiguation is not required. Some of those argue that City, State is not a disambiguation, but an alternative legitimate name. And so it goes in circles, not making any sense, at least not to me. But that's the argument for retaining the current wording of the U.S. city naming convention, so far as I can tell. --Serge 22:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I guess I can see benefits to both types of disambiguation ("City, State" and "City (State)"), but I would be interested to hear the arguments for pre-emptive disambiguation; even if "City, State" were an "alternative legitimate name," it should treated as just that — an alternative. And it doesn't make sense to me to use the alternative name when we can use the normal one. Can someone enlighten me on the arguments for pre-emptive dabbing here?
To be honest, the thing that seems very unWikipedian to me is that WP:NC:CITY lists all these different guidelines for different countries. Can we seriously not boil this down to one general guideline? --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 22:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Toby, I tried to propose a general naming convention for settlement articles all over the world once, and it became very difficult when trying to include different kinds of settlements in different countries, especially the ones that don't use English, or use more than one language. Most of the major English-speaking federal countries have a naming scheme similar to the US one, although they are all slightly different in details. --Scott Davis Talk 23:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Toby, since Serge is rather partisan on this subject, it's probably best to read the contents of this section rather than listen exclusively to what he says. It's rather long, but the section covers pretty well the pros and cons of each side.--Bobblehead (rants) 00:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Bobblehead. I've done just that and have come up with a summary of arguments for pre-emptive dabbing. I trust that someone will point out any errors or misrepresentations I've made below:
  1. Most U.S. city articles are already named this way.
  2. This method was consensus at some point in the past.
  3. This method allows for consistency among articles.
  4. This method is commonly used outside of Wikipedia.
  5. This method is supported by WP:NAME.
  6. This method prevents creation of subjective exceptions.
  7. This method makes articles appear less random to readers.
  8. This method places more identifying information in the title.
  9. This method makes things easier when settlement change names.
  10. This method prevents editor from having to check to see if a city name is unique.
  11. This method makes links easier to fix.
  12. This method prevents conflicts regarding which city deserves the undisambiguated article title.
  13. This method prevents disambiguation from being done incoherently or inconsistently.
Now, regarding #1 and #2, consensus can change, and it certainly appears that there is no longer a consensus in this case. As to #3, while pre-emptive dabbing might cause consistency among U.S. city articles, it would cause a greater inconsistency among all Wikipedia articles, where the convention is to disambiguate only when necessary.
I gave my thoughts on #4 and #5 in my Greeley example above. #6 doesn't make much sense to me, as every guideline on Wikipedia should have exceptions when necessary. Regarding #7 and #8, article titles on Wikipedia are not supposed to provide context; that is the job of the first line of the article.
Items #9, #10 and #11 all have to do with editing "conveniences," but none of these seem all that necessary; editors are used to doing this on Wikipedia all the time, and MediaWiki has several tools available to everyone for easily dealing with these issues.
As mentioned before in this discussion, #12 should not be an issue, since if there is any disagreement about which city should get the undisambiguated name, that's a sign that both (or all) cities should be disambiguated and a disambiguation page should be created. And #13 doesn't make much sense to me either, since any situation like this depends on editors who come along and fix articles that are named incorrectly.
I'm assuming that my list is incomplete or that I'm missing something obvious in my understanding of the issues above. I look forward to further enlightenment... --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 02:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
The problem is, there also isn't consensus to get rid of the City, State article naming convention and standard practice for this situation in Wikipedia is if no consensus currently exists the previous consensus is kept. So perhaps the better conclusion to reach as a result of this on going discussion is that there is no consensus to change from the City, State format. I'd also question the applicability of your example above as it is something that should never happen and would be a sign of a poorly written article than of a poor naming convention. Once the context of "Colorado" has been established by quantifying "Greeley, Colorado" it is only necessary to re-establish the context of Colorado if that context is lost or if the reference could be confused with a similarly named city. As an example:

Toby Rush lives in Greeley, Colorado. Greeley is a moderate-sized city located equidistant from Denver, an hour to the south; and Cheyenne, Wyoming, an hour to the north; and is home to the University of Northern Colorado. The populated area actually consists of three cities: Greeley; Evans; and Garden City, which came into existence as a place where liquor could be purchased during the years when Greeley had prohibition laws on the books. People in the region often refer to the tri-city area, consisting of Greeley; Fort Collins; and Loveland, all of which are within 45 minutes' drive of each other, though a fourth city, Windsor — which is situated between Loveland and Greeley — has experienced dramatic growth in the last decade. Greeley was the fastest growing city in the United States a few years back, and its population, as well as that of Loveland and Windsor, continues to grow.

The initial use of "Greeley, Colorado" established the context of Greeley being in Colorado, so it was unnecessary to repeatedly use "Greeley, Colorado" when referring to the city. Additionally, context is not lost when referring to other cities in Colorado as it is unlikely that the article would be referring to Garden City, Idaho or Evans, Georgia if it is talking about cities in very close proximity to Greeley. On the other hand, Cheyenne, Wyoming does require disambiguation as knowing Wyoming is an hour north of Greeley would require knowledge of not only Wyoming being north of Colorado, but that there is a city in Wyoming called Cheyenne. For a person that is not familiar with the geography of the US, linking to Cheyenne would be as applicable to linking to Cheyenne.--Bobblehead (rants) 03:46, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you once again for the well-reasoned reply, Bobblehead. You are right, of course, that a previous consensus should be followed until a new consensus is reached; however, my point is that the existence of a previous consensus should not be used as an argument against working toward a new and different consensus. This would prevent Wikipedia from evolving, which I think is one of its great strengths.
Second, I think you may have misunderstood my Greeley example (or I've misunderstood your points above). My point was to show that treating the "City, State" construction as the most commonly used name for a city is not natural; my example was meant to illustrate how unnatural it sounds to continually use "City, State." On the contrary, the "City, State" construction is used to establish the context; after the context is established, it is natural to simply use the name of the city. In other words, the first sentence of your example is equivalent to writing "Toby Rush lives in Greeley, which is a city in the state of Colorado." --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ ›
Hmmm, I think you're misunderstanding the logic being used behind the consensus argument. It is not that the consensus on the discussion that established the City, State is the end of the discussion, but rather that the argument being made by those going for a modified version that allows for a City article name has not been compelling enough to change the previous consensus.
Ahhhh, I, apparently, misunderstood the point you were making with example. Thanks for the correction. I don't believe the argument being made is that City, State is the most common name and must be used at all times, only that it is a common name and that once context is established it is up to the editor whether or not to use City, State or City. Even if City, State is the common name for the city it would be awkward and inappropriate to repeatedly use City, State. It is no more appropriate to repeatedly use Greeley, Colorado and to include Colorado in reference to the every other city in your example than it is to repeatedly use Bill Clinton or to include Clinton when talking about Hillary and Chelsea once the context has been established that your talking about Bill Clinton. I'm fairly sure that the most common name by which people know the Clintons is Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton. That does not mean those names should be used exclusively or that it would not be any less awkward to repeatedly use those names when talking about them once Bill Clinton has been established as the context. "Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas. Bill Clinton's father is Roger Clinton and Bill Clinton's mother is Virginia Clinton. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton and his daughter is Chelsea Clinton. Bill Clinton was the 50th and 52nd Governor of Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States." All in all, common name does not dictate usage once context has been established.--Bobblehead (rants) 07:34, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with your statement above about consensus. However, my point was that "but that's the way it's done in the past", by itself, is not a compelling reason to prevent the guideline from being changed. Sure, there must be other reasons for the convention to be "City, State," and it is upon those reasons that the consensus stands. But if (hypothetically, of course!) each of those reasons were found to be invalid or inapplicable, the consensus should not remain solely on the basis of precedence (in other words, "we've determined there's no reason do it this way, but it's the way we've always done it, so we need to continue" is not a compelling argument).
Your point about relating city names to human names is very insightful and well-put. I feel that there is a difference between these two things, though: "Bill Clinton" feels like a complete identifier and not an identifier plus a disambiguator (as in "Bill, who is of the Clinton family"), whereas "Hope, Arkansas" feels like the equivalent of saying "Hope, which is in Arkansas." This, to me, is supported by looking at the first lines of each of those particular Wikipedia articles:

Hope is a small city in Hempstead County, Arkansas, United States.

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (...) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001.

In both of these cases, the boldface text shows, as it should, the subject of the article. Granted, it would be silly to say "Hope, Arkansas is a small city in Hempstead County, Arkansas..." because that would be repetitive; however, it would be even more silly to say "William Jefferson "Bill" is a member of the Clinton family and was the 42nd President..." because modern surnames are not treated as disambiguators but as important parts of one's name. --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 15:32, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is thinking that the convention should remain City, State solely because it is the current convention. Some may word it in that manner in their responses to move requests, but further discussion brings out why they think the convention should remain as City, State. The problem those arguing for a change in the naming convention have had is that they have been unable to successfully kick out the underpinnings for the current convention (whatever they may be). Until the change convention proponents are able to kick out those underpinnings it's a matter of looking at two acceptable alternatives and the current convention is going to win out.
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that beginning the article "Hope, Arkansas is a city..." is any more or less awkward than beginning the article with "Hope is a city...." Both Hope and Hope, Arkansas are valid common names for the city and it would be equally acceptable to begin the article with either name. Perhaps a better example of using the full common name is the naming convention for automobiles which is Manufacturer Model. The automobile convention is just a shorter way of saying "The <model> is a vehicle manufactured by <Manufacturer>". With that in mind it is equally acceptable to say:

The Toyota Camry is a mid-size sedan assembled by Toyota...

As it is to say:

The Camry is a mid-size sedan assembled by Toyota...

Either way, the decision to bold Toyota Camry or just Camry is a stylistic choice that are both equally acceptable. But, that's neither here nor there. This discussion is not about how cities are used within articles, but rather the title of the article. --Bobblehead (rants) 18:02, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Excellent point, Bobblehead. I'm consolidating my responses below. --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 19:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Toby made a good summary of the arguments for the existing convention, but missed

14. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)

The responses are fairly well presented, but to me appear weak in response to #6, #7, #11, #13. In particular, for #11 and #13, the strength of this naming convention is that each settlement has exactly one "correct" article name, and the article is found there. Settlement articles (especially large or historic ones) tend to have a lot of incoming links, relative to most other Wikipedia topics. While we can expect most experienced editors to check that most links they create do in fact link to the article they expect it to, it is a fact of Wikipedia that there will always be new and inexperienced or rushed and busy editors who do not check every link they create. It is highly unlikely that anybody will accidentally link to an article named "Cityname, State" when they meant to link to "Cityname (book)", "Cityname, Otherstate" or "Cityname (material)". It is very time- and bandwidth-consuming to browse several thousand links to a city article named with just one word to check whether some of them are links that should go somewhere else (and sometimes someone not familiar with the topic of the article containing the link cannot even tell). If the primary name is a disambig page, then all links to it are wrong, and cleanup editors can use tools like WP:POPUPS to quickly fix the links (Popups only works for this if the target is a disambig page). If the primary name is a redirect, then the links direct to the article don't need to be checked, and there is a smaller set of links to the redirect that need to be checked for other uses. --Scott Davis Talk 15:19, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Scott, thank you for correcting my list. I noticed in preparing this reply that uniquely-named cities in the U.S. are actually fairly rare. (Maybe that should be #15!) To use the example I found: if the Saguache, Colorado were moved to Saguache, there would be no violation of WP:NC(P) because (as far as I know) there are no other cities or towns with that name. As far as making things easier for editors, I based my comments above on WP:NAME, which states "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors...," and WP:DAB, which states "When there is no risk of confusion, do not disambiguate or add a link to a disambiguation page."
Since uniquely-named cities like Saguache are rare, I can see some benefit to using "City, State" for all U.S. cities for consistency, but if we view the ", State" as a form of disambiguation, it means that the guideline would be violating the Wikipedia-wide consistency of "disambiguate only when necessary." --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 16:29, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
The fact that uniquely named cities in the US are rare is another good reason for sticking with the current convention. While it is a Wikipedia-wide consistency that articles be disambiguated only when necessary, it is also a Wikipedia-wide consistency that articles be named for consistency and it is for that reason that Wikipedia has naming conventions. Biographical articles are located at Firstname Lastname unless they are virtually unknown in that format (therefore Madonna is located at Madonna (entertainer) instead of Madonna Ciccone Ritchie), automobiles are located at Manufacturer Model, flora is located at their scientific name. If a vast majority of articles for US cities are located at City, State then the reader would expect all articles related to US cities to be located at City, State and may get confused if they come upon a city's article located at City if they are unaware that that city's name is unique.--Bobblehead (rants) 18:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Classic rationalization. Like readers are so confused when they land on Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago and find that the respective state is not listed in the article name (but is in the first sentence of the intro). What a ridiculous point to make. For years, New York City was the only exception, yet no one complained about that being confusing. This is the point I tried to make below: the defenders of "City, State" just like it for no apparent reason, and then make up reasons (like the above) to justify their irrational esthetic preference. However, I don't mean to imply that they are being dishonest. Bobblehead in particular I'm sure is sincere. I just don't think that he realizes the "reasons" he cites do not support his position, but, rather, these reasons are conjured to rationalize his already set position. --18:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Serge, unlike yourself, I don't have a "set position" and have the ability to see both sides of this discussion. In fact, I've consistently !voted in favor of allowing some cities to be located at City (My personal favorite is to use the AP), but understand where those that want it to remain at City, State are coming from. You, on the other hand, have yet to provide a productive comment in this discussion and remain steadfast in your opinion that you are "Right" and anyone that disagrees with you is "Wrong". It has been this attitude by yourself and others that has prevented an acceptable compromise from being reached. --Bobblehead (rants) 19:24, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, my "set" position is that all Wikipedia articles should be named according to the most common name used to refer to the subject of that article, unless there is an ambiguity issue (in which case naming conventions should be consulted to decide how to dab). But that has nothing to do with U.S. city names per se, or city names in general. It applies to each and every article in Wikipedia, consistently. --Serge 21:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Toby's valiant effort

Toby, you are make a valiant effort. What's becoming more and more clear is that the proponents of the "City, State" default format simply like the idea that each U.S. city is at a known name, and can't really explain why they like it. They can come up with rationalizations to make it sound like their opinion is based on reason, but it really isn't. It's a matter of esthetics. I call it "consistency for the sake of consistency". Some other name categories within Wikipedia have been afflicted with similar sentiment, including names of royalty, ship names and aircraft names. But I think city names are different, in particular the large well-known cities (San Fransisco, Boston, Seattle, Houston, New York City, Oakland, etc., because they are so well known by City name alone. --Serge 18:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words, Serge. To be fair, though, Bobblehead and Scott Davis are making some well-reasoned points, and I'm a little more "on the fence" than I was when I came into the discussion.
I was involved in a similar discussion last year concerning television episode names; for example, if an article should be named Bart the Genius (Simpsons episode) or just Bart the Genius. I came into that discussion with the thought that consistency among episode articles was a better idea, but it became apparent to me that that particular consistency would occur at the expense of a higher level of consistency, namely that articles on Wikipedia should be disambiguated only when necessary. It was also determined that the "ease of use" benefit to pre-emptive dabbing could be provided by creating redirects at the disambiguated title. (By this logic, Toyota Camry should be moved to Camry, which seems more correct to me, but that's a discussion for another time and place!)
It seems to me that there are even more layers of consistency to deal with in the present discussion: consistency among U.S. cities, consistency among all cities, consistency among all polical divisions, and consistency among all articles. If the international convention were instead to always name city articles with the name of the city, and only add emcompassing political divisions (county, state, country, etc.) when necessary to disambiguate between similarly named cities, that would seem to me to enforce a stronger, overall consistency which is in line with Wikipedia's standard disambiguation policy. The fact that U.S. city articles follow a different naming convention than (as near as I can tell) those of every other country in the world does strike me as a rather glaring inconsistency. --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 19:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you about Camry, and I was involved in the TV episode discussion. At least those got resolved. It should be noted that the way that resolution was reached was through agreement that articles should not be disambiguated unless required. Yes, consistency is the common ground, but there is consistency with fundamental naming principles, and consistency with the names of similar articles. The issue here is: what do you do when being consistent with one is being inconsistent with the other? Which should trump which one? I don't understand why in some cases (like TV episodes) it is understood that being consistent with fundamental naming principles is more important (e.g., don't dab unless required), and in other cases (city name and car names) being consistent with the names of other articles is considered more important. --Serge 20:10, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Toby, consistency among all cities, regardless of US or non-US, is perhaps the best argument against keeping the US naming convention at City, State and I'm not particularly sure there is a logically strong counterargument to it (or at least not one I can think of). --Bobblehead (rants) 21:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Consistency among all Wikipedia articles - to use the most common name for the subject unless there is an ambiguity issue - is a stronger argument. --Serge 21:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Canada and Australia city and town articles also have naming conventions similar to the US one (with some exceptions specific to those countries). Doing disambig patrol would be much easier if the UK followed a similar guideline more closely. South Africa favours this form of name, but only for disambiguation. These are the largest federal English-speaking countries, and also have a lot of reused town names (other towns, people, plays, events, ...). --Scott Davis Talk 23:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
You are right that the US, Canada and Australia naming conventions are exceptions to an otherwise consistent international naming scheme, Scott... do you know what the reasoning is for making treating these countries as exceptions? --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 15:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Considering the volume of US, Canadian and Australian city articles versus other international city articles, I think the "City only" usage is the exception. AgneCheese/Wine 18:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this section starts out with a good question - why are people so attached to the "city, state" method: no particular reason? - and I think I have an answer: people like it because it is a common practice by those speaking about another place in or near their own country; most contributors to city articles live in or near the article they are contributing to. So with this in mind, you have your answer.

I consider it to be a simple "comfort from force of habit" trend - and, IMHO, I don't think it suited to an international publication that speaks indiscriminately (or should) of "other places in other countries" (than the city articles "locals" contribute to) the world over. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 00:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with locals being more comfortable with Cityname only. This is another after-the-fact rationalization. The rule to not dab (or elaborate) from the most commonly used name for a given Wikipedia article subject applies to all articles, regardless of how well-known or obscure those subjects are. And, again, the ", state" part is not part of any city name. This is exemplified by the fact that if you take a trip to some state, when you come back and tell others about it, you say you flew to whatever state, and then drove to Cityname, not Cityname, Statename, no matter how obscure or little known Cityname is. For example, we do say: "We flew to San Francisco and then drove up the coast to Mendocino", for example. We don't say: "We flew to San Francisco and then drove up the coast to Mendocino, California". So why is Mendocino a redirect to Mendocino, California when Mendocino, not Mendocino, California, is the name of the town that is the subject of that article? There is apparently no ambiguity issue (hence the redirect). --Serge 18:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Serge, the fundamental difference between your example and the Wikipedia city entries is that the former is a casual conversation while the later are articles about locations. If we are going to let casual conversation dictate our naming convention then we should propose that Los Angeles get moved to LA. As it has already been explained to you time and time again, the "official name" argument is faulty because many cities are officially named "Town of (city)" or "City of (city)" etc. Just as Marilyn Manson is "officially known" as Brian Warner, his Wikipedia article is titled at Marilyn Manson because that is what people are going to search for and it is a "correct and appropriate" way to address him. It is similarly correct and appropriate to refer to locations by the City, State convention since the location is in fact commonly, correctly and appropriately known in such a format. In response you are probably going to key in on the word "common" but in the army of keystrokes that you have unleashed in your quest this past year you have never yet being able to show how it is uncommon to refer to a location by City,State -especially in an encyclopedic matter.AgneCheese/Wine 19:14, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Decide what a city's proper name is; disambiguate from there. THEPROMENADER 19:55, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Agne, don't be silly. Just because I used an example of casual conversation does not mean the point does not transcend that one particular context. And, of course, it does. The same usage rules apply in more formal settings, including newspaper articles, books, legal documents, etc. And who said anything about the "official name" argument? That's a strawman. And it is NOT appropriate to refer to cities by the City, State convention since cities are NOT commonly, correctly and appropriately known in such a format. Cities are known by city name, period, and the state name is sometimes ALSO included to clarify location and/or disambiguate from other cities with the same name in other states. But NEVER does the ", Statename" part become part of the name of the city. And the name of the subject of the article is what is supposed to be the title of the article. --Serge 20:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The main issue I see with the "most commonly used name" argument is that the use of "city" versus "city, state" varies widely depending on the situation, the location of the reader/listener and the relative size or importance of the city being discussed. In his weather reports, Mike Nelson never refers to "Lamar, Colorado," even though there are cities named Lamar in neighboring states, because he knows he's talking primarily to a Colorado audience. In the nuclear community, people very often refer to "Los Alamos," "Oak Ridge," and "Livermore," regardless of where they are, because those are familiar cities and no context needs to be established. The same can be said among laypersons not only about "world class" cities like New York City and Los Angeles, but even Baltimore, Boise, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and even places like Colorado Springs and Oklahoma City... "state" is only provided when context is necessary or when we are trying to be formal for the sake of being formal.
Regarding Agne's request to Serge to show how it is uncommon to refer to a location by "City, State," one needs only to look at any moderately-sized Wikipedia city article, such as Springfield, Massachusetts: after the context is established in the first line of the article, the "city, state" is never again used in the text, though the city is referred to by name more than 100 times in the article. I think this lends creedence to the fact that ", State" is a method of disambiguation, and not part of the city's "most commonly used name." --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 21:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Um....no...that just establishes the good writing skill of avoiding redundancy. Once you have properly attributed the cityname and state of a location, why do you need to go over it again? After it was established in the Lead paragraph of Springfield, Massachusetts that it is the hometown of Dr. Seuss there is no further mention of it. There is no need for "Springfield, the home of Dr Seuss, is the cultural center of Western Massachusetts..." Now, on the other hand, what would be evidence of the uncommon nature of "City, State" would be if people across a broad spectrum of mediums and circumstances would consistency avoid reference to the state when talking about a particular location. As Promenader notes below, there is a difference when dealing with locals and people from other countries. Every Wiki article is written for a broad scope of audiences, not just the locals of a particular city, state, country or hemisphere. For the "City only" proponents to prevail they must demonstrate that they are not showing brash favoritism and bias to the locals of a city who may talk to each in "city only" style but are taking into consideration the folks across the globe who have no clue what the heck Assawoman is compared to Chicago.AgneCheese/Wine 19:05, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand this need to include or imply the subject of the article in the article title. For example, why Jabuticaba instead of Jabuticaba grape? People might not have any idea what "Jabuticaba" is. Putting "grape" lets them know at a glance that it is a kind of grape. Are we showing favoritism to people who study fruits? The same is true for any obscure topic you might think of. The fact that the "city, state" construction is never used in city articles should be a clue as to what the thing is usually called. "City, State" is simply a location not a name. Most of the time, the state name is added only to distinguish it from similarly named places or to provide context. --Polaron | Talk 19:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
As someone who does study fruit and has had the opportunity to sample Jabuticaba wine, I can say with immense certainty that it is quite uncommon to hear someone say Jabuticaba grape. Even when speaking to someone completely unfamiliar with the subject, it was only referred to as just Jabuticaba. It is far more common to hear someone refer to a location as City, State. Your analogy is a bit off the mark in this regard.AgneCheese/Wine 20:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've never heard of the Jabuticaba grape or wine, but I certainly have heard of the Chardonnay grape, Pinot Noir grape, Merlot grape, Cabernet Sauvignon grape, Zinfandel grape, Pinot Gris grape, Petite Verdot grape, Malbec grape, etc., and those are just off the top of my head. But "for clarification" is not a good argument to include the word grape in each of the titles for the articles with these grapes as their subjects, just as "for clarification" by including the statename in the title of the article about a given city is not a good argument to do that. --Serge 20:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
You just going further down a slippery slope, Serge as the conversation loses more productivity. Unlike the concept of dealing with a location, with things like Chardonnay you have three distinct entities "the wine", "the grape" and "the vine" so in those cases you would have to specify grapes. Now we could continue to dance on this slope and I can go into further detail about exotic grapes like Jabuticaba and "country wines" but I think the rest of the audience would probably agree that all this fruit talk is drifting away from the subject at hand. In short, comparing concepts like wine grapes to locations is sort of like comparing Apples to Oranges. They are so fundamentally different that analogy fall far short of being compelling support to an argument.AgneCheese/Wine 20:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Interesting how I didn't see you arguing that automobile models "are so fundamentally different that analogy fall far short of being compelling support" when that analogy was used to support your position. Note also that we "only dab when necessary" proponents didn't resort to "apples/oranges" excuses to evade that point. And I'm supposed to be the unproductive one? --Serge 20:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Hear, hear. "Most commonly used" to perhaps people in the same country (different state, county), but not so to those foreign to that place. My home town is London in the Canadian province of Ontario: would I speak of that place with a countryman, I would say London, Ontario - but would I speak of the same to, say, a Scot, I would say London in Canada - now, how did you want to disambiguate? Did we need to (here, yes)? Is Wiki only for the eyes of the countrymen of those who write articles here? THEPROMENADER 22:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear to me that basing the naming convention on "most commonly used name" is not going to bring the issue to any resolution, simply because there are too many frames of reference and no natural precedence among them, at least for a project of Wikipedia's scope. As a result, any decision based on this would involve far too many subjective decisions to be considered a "convention."

Many of these same arguments were brought up in last year's discussion at WP:TV-NC, and one of the understandings I came away with was that article titles need not — and even should not — provide context; as far as the article goes, this context should be provided by the first line of the article (and as far as linking goes, the context should be provided by the linking page, using a piped link if necessary). Unless I am misunderstanding the different views represented here, I get the impression that everyone here agrees that ", State" serves the purpose of providing context. Am I to assume, then, that some of you feel that article titles should, or at least can provide necessary context? -Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 21:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I think there is no disagreement about whether titles can provide context, at least in those cases where disambiguation is required. It is a very useful feature of Wikipedia that a reader can discern whether a given name is unique or clearly the most common usage of that name, or whether it is shared with other usages, simply by looking at the title of the article. For just about any Wikipedia article that is not about a U.S. city, if the name of the subject is augmented with additional contextual information in the title, that means there are almost certainly other relatively common uses of that name. But for U.S. city articles, if the name of the subject is augmented with additional contextual information in the title, that doesn't mean anything. The name of the city still might be unique. Or maybe there are other uses of that name. There is no way to know. This is what has always bothered me the most about the predisambiguation of unique U.S. city names - the Wikipedia name uniqueness feature is lost. --Serge 22:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I should have been more clear in my comment above... what I meant to ask is this: does anyone here here feel that, general Wikipedia level, an article title can or should provide context when there is no danger of confusing it with another article on Wikipedia? --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 22:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
It probably will surprise no one but I think the current TV naming convention did a marked disservice to the Wikipedia community and violated the principle laid out in WP:TITLE that "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists." The current TV naming convention automatically assumes that the reader is an expert in the particular TV show and will instantly know what the heck Whacking Day, The Puppet Show, and The Greater Good is. So yes, I think a good title does provide a degree of context. It doesn't need to explain everything that would be in the lead paragraph but it should give at least a silver of a clue what the heck an Assawoman is. While the "City only" convention has that glaring fault, the City, State convention clearly serves the reader better with a title of Assawoman, Virginia.AgneCheese/Wine 22:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, well, well. Excellent question, Toby, this turned out to be. At least Agne is able to admit she believes that a Wikipedia article title should provide context as well as specify the subject name, especially, apparently, if the name is relatively obscure. Very interesting. Does anyone agree with Agne? There were less than a handful of folks out of about a couple of dozen in the TV naming discussion that held this view. --Serge 23:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying your position, Agne. I do find it interesting that you (and, presumably, many others) feel that WP:TV-NC is incorrect. To better illustrate my position, I hope that you will forgive me if I quote the comments made by User:Josiah Rowe in that discussion that changed my mind about pre-emptive dabbing:

True, it's not readily apparent that The New and Improved Carl Morrissey is about an episode of The 4400; but then, it's not readily apparent that The Man in the Brown Suit is an Agatha Christie mystery — until you click on the link. We don't title that page The Man in the Brown Suit (novel), because there's nothing else that would claim that title. Similarly, unless there's another article that could be titled The New and Improved Carl Morrissey, we shouldn't title the article The New and Improved Carl Morrissey (The 4400 episode).

I'm also confused by the obsession that some editors have with "consistency". Why should we fetishize the names of articles? In any article related to the television series, an episode's name will be piped anyway. It's only in a category that people will see that some articles have the suffix and some do not. Do Category:First Doctor serials and the other daughter categories of Category:Doctor Who serials look less "professional" because the Doctor Who WikiProject follows standard Wikipedia practice? For that matter, does Category:Agatha Christie novels look less "professional" because some articles have the (novel) suffix and some do not? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[...]

In my mind, the most prominent reason to [pre-emptively disambiguate] is because episode titles alone are not complete or dependable identifiers of television episodes. Some TV series (The Simpsons, Friends) don't even display the titles as part of the episode at all. If you read a novel where each chapter was marked with only a number ("Chapter 1," "Chapter 2," and so on), would it be intuitive to have research on those chapters listed under the names that the author might have used but didn't actually include in the book?

That being said, I wonder if part of the issue here is semantics: the proposal is to somehow put the series name in a parenthesis after the episode title, something that is otherwise used in Wikipedia to indicate disambiguation. But I'm not sure that disambiguation is people are looking for here (which is why I put it in quotes above). The Jericho episode "The Four Horsemen" seems to better illustrate what I'm thinking of, but of course that's hopelessly unwieldly for an article name. Is there better way to identify episodes as being "chapters in a series" than by using the system normally used for disambiguation? --TobyRush 15:02, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Toby, this is a noteworthy point, and it leads to the question of whether it is necessary to provide this context in the name of an article. Any link to a specific episode of a television series should provide enough context for a reader to know that they're going to an article about an episode. The job of an article title isn't to provide context for those who don't know what the subject is — the article does that. If I came upon a contextless link to, say Adios Butler (a page I found by hitting "random article" a few times), I would have no idea what that was. But if I see a link to Adios Butler in a list of pacing horses on Harness racing, then I'll know that Adios Butler is a horse. My ignorance of the subject of horse racing is not a justification for renaming that article Adios Butler (horse).

The mere fact that most people who watch television don't take note of episodes' names does not mean that Wikipedia needs to provide that context in an article's title. I'd expect that if someone wanted to find an article on a particular episode of Lost, they'd probably go first to Lost, thence to Lost (TV series), thence to List of Lost episodes, where they'll find the episode they're interested in. At no point in that process does it matter whether the episode is titled Further Instructions or Further Instructions (Lost). So the fact that most television viewers don't know episode names is really irrelevant to the question of Wikipedia's naming conventions. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that Josiah made some excellent points, and that this all applies to city naming convention as well. Agne, I think I assumed that Josiah's position above reflects an opinion held by the majority; I realize now that I may have leapt to conclusions. In what way do you feel Josiah is off-base here? --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 23:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the TV episode guideline is a particularly good example as the only reason for including {Simpsons episode) after "Bart the Genius" is for context. Unlike television episodes, context is not the only reason for having US cities at City, State. The City only proponents have always failed to counter the argument that City, State is a common name for cities and in many cases, particularly the smaller cities, it is the only name by which a city is referred to, excluding an extremely small percentage of the population. The counterarguments that have most frequently been to City, State being a common name has always focused on either the state not being in a city's legal/correct name (Its El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, nowhere do you see California), or claiming that the lack of having to use the State once context has been established proves that City, State is not a common name. --Bobblehead (rants) 23:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Responding to Toby's question above at 22:37, 13 July 2007 does anyone here here feel that, general Wikipedia level, an article title can or should provide context when there is no danger of confusing it with another article on Wikipedia?, The answer is yes, as required by WP:NC(P). A simple example is that we all know what Britannica will be about, but that title is only a redirect to the featured article. --Scott Davis Talk 13:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
No one is arguing the shortest name is always best. Encyclopædia is part of the most common name used to refer to the Encyclopædia Brittannica. In contrast, , California is not part of the name of San Francisco, much less part of the most common name used to refer it. No one is arguing that San Franscisco should be at San Fran, Frisco or The City. --Serge 20:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Scott, I'm not sure that I'm clear about where WP:NC(P) supports the idea of providing context when there is no danger of confusing the article with a similarly-named one elsewhere. It seems like the pertinent phrase is "If a word or phrase is ambiguous, and an article concerns only one of the meanings of that word or phrase, it should usually be titled with something more precise than just that word or phrase (unless it is unlikely that the related usages deserve their own article)." Is this the specific part of the page you're referring to, or is it something else? (And please forgive me if I'm missing something blatantly obvious!) --Toby Rush ‹ ✆|✍ › 20:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
That's the relevant bit now - a previous version said do not title articles ambiguously as though that title had no other meanings. Essentially, a name might refer to a city, but there could be other places, and events that have occurred in those cities, and films, books, TV episodes or plays about or set in those cities that all could have the same short name, in their own context. It is safer and easier to use a sufficiently precise name for each article to start with than to have to sort out the links some time later. Place articles attract a lot of incoming links, so naming articles so that the incoming links don't need to be reviewed for accuracy too often is a helpful action that takes little effort, but improves the overall quality of the project. Serge wants to be able to encode in article titles "this name is not used by any other place" for people who know the code. I want to encode "this link has not been checked for accuracy" in links that could be ambiguous - see my Texas example about Paris/Atlanta example below, where the wrong information actually looks like it's more significant to a reader further than a state boundary away. --Scott Davis Talk 15:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The proposed change

At any rate, what about the proposed change that I made at the top of this section? Seems like there are few if any objections. I'd like to avoid having a vote, but wouldn't want to incorrectly presume we have consensus as well. --Serge 23:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is consensus for the degree to which you are proposing, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is essentially "Where possible, articles on places in the US should go under [[placename]]. Where disambiguation is needed, they should go under [[placename, state]]. Thus Issaquah but Phoenix, Arizona." I'm also not sure if there is consensus to make the change solely to the US. There seems to be more interest in making the naming convention universal. --Bobblehead (rants) 00:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention a discussion involving the changes to the name of potentially hundreds of articles should really involve more than just the small handful of people here. Before any drastic change to the naming convention, it really should be opened up to the Wikipedia community as a whole. --Bobblehead (rants) 00:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
In theory, I would accept "world cities" not having a qualifying state in their article names, if some objective criteria could be determined. In practice, major cities almost always have other things named after them, so the name is not unique, even if that is the only city with the name, and there are often smaller places with the same names anyway. The maintenance aspect of Wikipedia is what makes me so strongly in favour of using a precise name for the articles in the first place. I have been involved in the moves for several articles about places in the British Isles away from just "City". This involved:
  • getting consensus to move the article,
  • getting consensus on what the new name should be (this is not always as clear there as the state and province boundaries in US, AUS, CAN and SA)
  • move the article (duh!)
  • fix several thousand links that went to the old name
  • (finally) move or create a disambig page
Fixing the links required someone to read the articles and think about the target, even for articles that had always been at that name, over 10% of the links to it were wrong. If the "default" article is a disambig page, it helps both readers and maintainers of Wikipedia. Readers are helped by not ending up at an unexpected (or wrong!) article. Maintainers can easily identify what links need to be fixed. In both cases, this increases the reliability of Wikipedia by not having false or confusing information. For example, if "Fred" is a famous Texan, "Fred was born in Paris and grew up in Atlanta" is a notable aspect of his biography, but "Fred was born in Paris and grew up in Atlanta" is much less interesting. If Paris and Atlanta are both disambig pages, it highlights to readers that there could be a problem, but to the author of his biography who also comes from northeast Texas, "Paris" and "Atlanta" are local places. Ideally, the author would have checked both links, but that does not always happen. A later maintainer may not even be able to tell from the article which cities are intended, and can only presume that the author knew what they were linking to, and not change the links, even if they are factually incorrect. --Scott Davis Talk 02:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Bobblehead, you asked me to correct you if you're wrong. Please reread the first entry to this section (entitled United States). I think you're conflating my general position with what I'm proposing. I am proposing nothing but adding one paragraph to make a point of clarification to the current written guideline. This will not create a mandate to change the name of even a single article. As I originally noted, all I'm trying to accomplish with this particular proposal is to clarify that the current convention does not require following the Cityname, Statename format; that exceptions are allowed. In other words, I'm not trying to change a guideline, I simply seek to have it more accurately reflect what the convention is; to make sure it's not misleading.

The way the city naming guidelines are currently written, they are specific to each country. That's not my fault. Whether the whole thing eventually (years from now?) gets wrapped up into a single guideline is a separate issue and totally irrelevant to whether this specific modest proposal should be supported today or not.

Finally, this proposal has nothing to do with "a discussion involving the changes to the name of potentially hundreds of articles". Tens if not hundreds of similarly minor edits have been made to the U.S city naming guideline without any discussion.

So do you (or anyone else) have an objection to what I've actually proposed? --Serge 17:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't conflate anything. I merely made the rather accurate interpretation that the end result of the addition of your proposed paragraph would have the same end result as my wording. It is just that with the addition of your paragraph it would require hundreds of page move requests and bitter discussions before the articles were moved to "Placename". While my wording would only require discussion on the much fewer situations where there are multiple cities with the same name, ex. Boston, Massachusetts → Boston. How is this:

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

Of course, exceptions are allowed. In particular, cities which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, can have titles consisting of only the city name (e.g., New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago).

A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

Substantively different from this:

Where possible, articles on places in the US should go under [[placename]]. Where disambiguation is needed, they should go under [[placename, state]]. Thus Issaquah but Phoenix, Arizona.

Characterizing your proposed wording change as minor is laughably absurd. The impact that it would have upon the current naming of articles and subsequent move requests is huge.--Bobblehead (rants) 18:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Bobblehead, the meaning of your rewording is very different from what I am proposing. Your re-interpretation is based on what should be. Mine simply clarifies what can be. The difference between "should" and "can" is substantive. Similar wording has been in place for months in the past, and did not cause a single article name to change, so far as I know. Similar wording is and has been in place for other countries too, with none of the results that you seem to fear. Again, all my proposal does is clarify what the convention currently is. It doesn't change what the guideline is. It is interesting, however, that your re-interpretation replaces "can" with "should" and adds instructions like "When possible". Why twist it like that if your genuinely trying to reflect what I'm actually proposing? --Serge 19:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
The difference between could and should are operationally not that different and codifying the exceptions as your proposal does makes that difference even less so. From what I can tell, there haven't been any wordings of the exceptions that are even close to what you're proposing. Do you have any diffs showing similar wording having been used? The closest I've found is this change by Will Beback[1] that he reverted four hours later.[2] Since this naming convention was accepted the actual wording of the convention has remained relatively unchanged. When the convention was made official in November 05,[3] there was a notification that the applicability of the standard was being discussed and pointed people towards the talk page to discuss it, but in February 2006 it was removed and, after a series of reverts, it stayed off.[4] The "(exception is New York)" was add on February 21, 2006 by Georgia guy[5] until you added Chicago on August 21, 2006, when it changed to "(exceptions are New York and Chicago)",[6]. The addition of Chicago remained stable until October 15, 2006 when you added Philadelphia, and it became "(exceptions include Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York)"[7]. Again, that wording remained relatively stable until December 27, 2006 when Vegaswikian removed the exception wording,[8] which lasted until January 2, 2007, when you reverted it.[9] Which lasted until Will Beback's changes I mentioned above. --Bobblehead (rants) 22:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Bobblehead, we can agree to disagree on the operational differences between "should" and "can". If that's truly the issue for you, we can adjust the wording accordingly. That's certainly not a deal-breaker for me. I mean, do you have an objection with stating explicitly that exceptions are allowed? If so, why? Or is it all about a desire to obscure the fact that exceptions are allowed? Hopefully, not. So, what if the paragraph simply said:

As with all guidelines, exceptions are allowed (e.g., New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago).

Are you okay with that? --Serge 22:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that already stated in the introduction of the guideline? Twice, actually. Once in {{Wikipedia subcat guideline}} and again in the introduction text itself. Are we going to add "As with all guidelines, exceptions are allowed
(e.g., <insert exceptions here>)" to all of the various country/continent naming conventions? Either way it is rather redundant, yes?  --Bobblehead (rants) 00:01, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's redundant, which is why I was so startled when you said my contention that it was a minor change was "laughably absurd". But I guess that's because you think the words I've now omited are significant, even though all they did was clarify in what cases exceptions can be given. A clarification is hardly a change at all, much less a "minor change". In any case, it is very common for people to cite this convention, as if there can be no exceptions, as a basis for not changing some U.S. city name. They use that basis even though there always can be exceptions. I think it's important for people to cite the reason the support or oppose a move, and thinking that the current name is required hinders them from being able to do that. I'm not suggesting that this needs to be clarified in every single guideline, only in those where there seems to be a regular problem of understanding that. The U.S. city naming guideline is the only one I know of that this problem applies to. If there are others, these words should be added there too. But I seriously doubt it's required. --Serge 00:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
But other guidelines typically state the criteria for when an exception can be made. In the absence of said criteria, a listing of current exceptions is valid, particularly for this case because many people seem to oppose proposed moves saying if the change the guideline before requesting a move, as if there can be no exceptions to this particular guideline. --Polaron | Talk 00:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Good point. You've convinced me it should be in there, with the caveat that if Bobblehead's interpretation is the one that is often made, and changes made accordingly, that it should be clarified accordingly. --Serge 23:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Consensus for the change

Come on folks, do we really need a vote on this? If you want to claim there is no consensus for the proposed change, please state your reasons here. Polaron made his point 3 or 4 days ago, and no one responded but me, yesterday. You can't not participate and then just revert based on "no consensus". And how about making a counter-proposal if you really trying to achieve consensus? After over a week of discussion, it appeared to me that all the objections were addressed, so I applied the change [10] with the following comment: "per talk". Vegaswikian then reverted the change with the following comment: "rv change that affects the meaning of the guideline and has not been discussed with consensus. In fact the discusion was different then is stated here" [11]. Affects the meaning of the guideline? Only Bobblehead expressed that view, but he was talking about a wording based on "should" rather than "can". His argument is not even relevant to the wording that was proposed. Has not been discussed? I made the proposal for this rather modest change over a week ago. Very few people have even addressed what I actually proposed. No one has shown any interest on working on an alternative. There has been plenty of opportunity to discuss the specific proposal. --Serge 21:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Yes, I'm happy listing only NYC as an exemption since, based on the previous discussions, that was the only one with long standing. However as was pointed out, it also has a clouded history on why it was changed. Changing the guideline so that we have a series of rename nominations that will repeat the same old arguments is not a good change. If the guideline is going to suggest that changes will be allowed then we need some criteria and that has been the sticking point all along. If there is a compromise to the guideline, then listing the three current exceptions in a manner that does not suggest a wholesale renaming is acceptable, would be it. Vegaswikian 21:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • What do you mean by, "Changing the guideline so that we have a series of rename nominations"? Since exceptions are always allowed to guidelines, why on this one do "we need some criteria" if we mention the fact that exceptions are allowed? I don't see how listing the threee exceptions suggests a "wholesale renaming is acceptable", so I assume you don't object to that. --Serge 21:53, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Your change would lead to a flood of requests to move articles. There is no consensus on the question of allowing changes to city only and if so, in what cases. Right now everything is quiet with an apparent consensus to not rock the boat and spend time on something other then the same old arguments here. Any change to the guideline that would shift the position one way or the other would be without consensus. Vegaswikian 22:11, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • How do you know the change would lead to a flood of requests? And I addressed this above when I wrote, "with the caveat that if Bobblehead's interpretation is the one that is often made, and changes made accordingly, that it should be clarified accordingly". If there are a flood of requests (which I seriously doubt), then we can make an appropriate clarification in the guideline. I know there is no consensus on the city only question, which leaves us at the default situation: each one is decided independently (when they come up). Right now we are in a situation where the guideline incorrectly suggests that there can be no exceptions. This is made evident by how many folks cite that reason when they oppose a change to city only. Several polls have shown that there is no consensus for the status quo; please do not make false claims to the contrary. --Serge 22:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't object to saying that exceptions are allowed. However we shouldn't list specific articles that don't follow the naming convention because that implies the naming convention endorses those exceptions, and tends to support those exceptions. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • One overwhelming problem that has yet to be address is the fact that (with the exception of maybe New York City) there is nothing "exceptional" about the exceptions and even with the proposed rewording we are left with this vague concept that "there are exceptions to the guideline" with no concrete definition of what makes something exceptional. All the proposed wording will do is encourage, as Vegas alluded to, more fishing expeditions to try and create more exceptions. I firmly believe that before we change the guideline to list "exceptions" that we have some concrete consensus surrounding what truly should be exceptions. Putting a request in at opportune times, ala Chicago and Philadelphia is not "exceptional". AgneCheese/Wine 23:24, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
    • So can we talk now about the criteria for what might be exceptions? --Polaron | Talk 23:51, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I have no problem with that. We should start with trying to define what is "exceptional" about Philadelphia and Chicago. AgneCheese/Wine 23:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The text at the opening of the guideline seems sufficient:
    • Please remember that these conventions for naming settlements are merely guidelines, not rules written in stone. They permit the exercise of common sense, and have occasional exceptions.
  • Do we really need to say more than that? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes because some people are under the impression that exceptions are not allowed. If the "flood of move requests" that some people are afraid of do start to occur then you may have a point. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with listing the exceptions, in the absence of criteria for exceptions. --Polaron | Talk 23:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Will made an excellent point. The line at the top covers the basis of what Serge and Polaron seem to want-The idea that consensus and conventions can change but it doesn't introduce the vague ambiguity of "exceptions" that don't have any concrete definition of being exceptional. AgneCheese/Wine 23:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi Will. I agree with Polaron. For most guidelines it does not seem to be an issue, but for some categories of names, including cities of certain countries (e.g., see 2nd paragraph of Canadian guideline) and TV episode names[12], there does seem to be a need to repeat this basic concept in the specific guideline itself. Again, given the number of people that oppose city-only on the assumption that there can be no exceptions to the comma convention, U.S. cities seems to need this too.
And I don't understand Agne's objection at all. She seems to be objecting to the fundamental way most Wikipedia articles are named: for the vast majority of articles, there are no specific rules on how to name the articles. There are ambiguities and gray areas. The fact that "we are left with this vague concept that "there are exceptions to the guideline" with no concrete definition of what makes something exceptional" is the norm for Wikipedia. Why is the norm a problem for U.S. cities? --Serge 00:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
It appears there's no consensus for this change. - ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:35, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Apparently. But it would be nice if people spoke up during the week the proposal has been out there. Again, 3 to 4 days had passed since Polaron made his point, and no one objected. Anyway, simply stating that there are exceptions is simply stating the facts. --Serge 00:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Exceptions would be defined as something exceptional, which has not been done. So we are not dealing with "exceptions" here but rather deviations. If you are going to insist on their inclusion in the guideline (without getting consensus first) then at least accurately describe them. AgneCheese/Wine 00:50, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Agne, exceptional is defined as "deviating from the norm" at m-w.com, so I think you're splitting hairs. Makes little difference to me, except that the "exceptions" (not deviations) is the standard language used in Wikipedia in these contexts, I'd prefer to stick with that. --Serge 01:03, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Just a little bit of thought from someone (thus far) uninvolved in this discussion. It's possible someone has already mentioned this as I did not make an exhaustive reading of the discussion thus far, but has anyone considered the more technical ramifications of making this change? I run a bot that is designed to slowly crawl through the articles for the various US cities and update the maps (and some infoboxes). A consistent naming scheme is very important for this kind of application, as the bot is designed to find articles in the City, State format, or City, County, State format when ambiguous. I understand the argument being made in favor of having clearly unambiguous cities such as New York City with just the city name, but these should be the exception and not the rule. It is not difficult for me to remember that NYC is an exception and handle it accordingly with my bot script - but the more exceptions that are introduced the more burden is placed on myself to remember these exceptions and plan accordingly. It may sound like laziness on my part but I strongly prefer having articles in the City, State naming scheme with very few exceptions being made. This isn't just for my benefit either - consistent, predictable and objective naming schemes are extremely important to technical applications such as bot operation. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Excellent point and one I've believe has been mentioned before but it does merit mention again. While there are some City Only proponents that seem sent on City Only for any "unique" city name, there are some who are open to a limited number of exceptions. Unfortunately there has yet to be an objective criteria for what dictates those exception that would be of benefit to an encyclopedia.AgneCheese/Wine 20:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Wake us up if something happens to move towards a compromise

I suspect that many editors are not commenting on this discussion or trying to forge a new consensus. If and when the discussion gets moving please post a clear announcement under a new heading so that everyone knows that something productive is happening. If anyone thinks there is a consensus to change anything, follow the above suggestion. Lack of participation in the discussions on this page right now do not mean consensus or support for anything. Vegaswikian 00:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Precisely. I've seen nothing new in any of the proposals and have little interest in rehashing the same old tediously tendentious arguments. older ≠ wiser 00:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I've done my best to inject a wider reasoning into the discussion, but even that has been buried under loads of garbled and disorganised cruft. Let's see what the coming weeks bring. THEPROMENADER 07:55, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Bkonrad, if someone makes a proposal, it's hardly fair to claim insufficient interest to make the effort to note your disagreement, but then go ahead and support a revert due to an alleged "lack of consensus". Silence implies consent. You can't have it both ways. My proposal was posted and discussed for a week before I made a single change. Very little of the commentary indicated opposition to the change. What few comments that were made, were addressed by myself and others. Then, days after the change was already made, there were new changes being implemented, without any effort to propose/discuss on this take page, directly on the project page. Regardless what our differences in views may be, surely you do not defend such blatant disregard for basic Wikipedia process. --Serge 20:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Many editors are tired of reading the same discussions over and over so they have tuned out. They are likely supporting the current consensus stalemate. So they need to know if something is actually at the point where a change might happen. So if changes are made from discussions buried in the above voluminous repetitive discussions, these editors must know about it. Expect changes that do not get a strong consensus to be reverted. Vegaswikian 20:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • And Serge is likely to hear silent consent where there has in fact been vocal opposition, as with his latest sentence about Chicago and Philadelphia. It was immediately opposed by Vegaswikian, after which the whole question of having exceptions at all was re-aired for a new set of ears. This included Scott Davis's elqouent justification for the present system; and his arguments would in fact support the prohibition of exceptions. Serge, please pay some respect to what actually happened; it is, after all, still on this page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
That sort of predjudice serves no constructive purpose. Same as making a "choice" and finding any and every argument/means to make it stick - what counts most is the reasoning behind that choice. You're both guilty of leaving reasoning behind in favour of your own pet preferences. THEPROMENADER 22:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
PMAnderson, Scott Davis's "elqouent justification for the present system" was a non-sequitur to the proposal I made. It doesn't even address the proposal, much less state an objection to it. It's still there if you want to read it. --Serge 22:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

POV tagging

A true statement simply can't be POV. The editors marking their territory by tagging and qualifying the article appear to me to be the edit warriors. If you don't like the fact that these articles are indeed exceptions, then move them so as to make them no longer exceptions. Then change the article because the statement is no longer true. Otherwise, please stop edit warring. It is beginning to look like harassment of another editor to me. IPSOS (talk) 19:05, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

The issue, I think, is that in most guideline, when we mention an exception it is to illustrate a particular reason that an exception would be needed. There are undoubtledly many U.S. settlements that don't follow the existing convention for one reason or another. We don't list all of them. It's not clear why we list Philadelphia. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Inserting any statement in a guideline asserts that it is consensus; in this case, it is also likely, from the record, to be used to assert that this guideline says they should be exceptions. Some editors hold (I am not one) that it would be better to have no exceptions at all; there has never been consensus to allow or forbid them. Better to say nothing, as we did (excepting these isolated edits from Serge) for months.
It would also be appreciated if you would reread Arthur Rubin's text, which says nothing about PoV. Serge added his sentence without consensus (and despite vocal opposition); Arthur said that he had. Not even Serge now contests this; he says he tried for consensus; and he does seem to have done so. If there is opposition to removing the sentence, the rest of his text - about there being no consensus to remove - can go back too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:26, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
We should have a tag saying that part of a guideline is disputed, tentative, or non-consensus; but as far as I can see, we don't. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:32, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
The reasons for exceptions should always be clearly stated. Even if the reason for the exception is only the consensus (or 'choice', 'taste', whatever) of those contributing to an article itself, this should be stated there as well. At least this honest clarification will keep "rogue movers" of other articles at bay until a wider (and real) consensus over a wider convention is reached. THEPROMENADER 22:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the majority of people that took part in the Chicago and Philadelphia move (on both sides) weren't really contributors to either articles. Both moves were not the product of any real consensus, just the folly of circumstance and opportunity.AgneCheese/Wine 22:11, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, vey. All the same actors, then? Sorry, gotcha. THEPROMENADER 23:29, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I pretty certain Agne's statement is incorrect for the Chicago move. --Polaron | Talk 23:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
While we're reviewing past page moves, it might be instructive to see how many proposals there have been that did or didn't succeed. IIRC, the "cityname" only proposal was rejected on previous polls prior to being accepted. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:36, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

PMAnderson, please do not misrepresent the facts. I did not make any changes "without consensus (and despite vocal opposition)". I made a proposal (see top of this talk page), waited over a week, during which I and others discussed and addressed all stated concerns. Only then did I make a change. Again, nobody opposed it, but a few changes were made, participation indicating approval. Polaron made his statement days before I made any changes to the actual text. No one expressed disagreement, which is implied consent.

In contrast, there has been very little discussion, much less the establishment of any consensus, with respect to changes made since the July 17 stable version. I again request that any changes made to this controversial section be proposed and discussed on this talk page before they are implemented on the actual project page. It's not that hard. You need to make a reasonable effort to establish consensus before making a change, just as I did. You can do it. --Serge 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it is a major mistake to interpret "silence as consent". Given the nature of Wikipedia some people may not be aware of a conversation going or they maybe temporarily away. It's very clear from the Chicago and Philadelphia page moves that silence certainly does not equal consent. AgneCheese/Wine 20:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
And there was vocal dissent almost immediately; the next post after Serge's proposal was a dissent from Vegaswikian, which continued, as the top of the page will show. After that the conversation devolved into a general discussion of preemptive disambiguation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Once Polaron called Vegaswikian on the red herring basis for his "objection", Vegaswikian had no more response. Are red herring objections to be considered objections? --Serge 20:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
In other words, any position Serge doesn't agree with doesn't count; and everybody has to reply on this page all the time, no matter what response is made to them, or they silently consented. This is bad faith. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Deciding to not waste time on arguments that are going nowhere is not wrong. At some point in the discussion anyone has the right to back away. The problem here is that most editors have decided that they don't see any chance at this time to move consensus. So why waste time? A few editors do believe that their perceived that their sound proposals should get consensus. However that appears to be a minority position. Vegaswikian 21:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Not voicing your opinion on a matter is not a form of disagreement. Regardless of the futility of discussion or how many times it is brought up, silence does equate to acceptance of the consensus reached by those that participate in the discussion. That's not to say that the manner in which the US convention was made is acceptable, just that one should not expect their preferred result to happen if they do not let their opinions be known. --Bobblehead (rants) 21:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
How many times do you need to object? There must be some point at which the discussion is closed as no consensus. Likewise there must be some point where a simple response of objection, or oppose, or don't support is acceptable even with no explanation required. Vegaswikian 21:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Consensus and opinions change especially when the last discussion on this page was almost six months ago. As far as a simple objection being enough, Wikipedia is not a democracy and simply voting is not an acceptable response, you have to provide reasons why you oppose or support something. --Bobblehead (rants) 23:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

General rule

"The general rule is to name an article about a city or town with a name that does not conflict with any other town or concept as city name." How can this be a general rule if it is the wrong one for nearly every city in the US, as stated by the current United States section? I should think that these changes are obvious and uncontroversial, as they correct a previous contradiction within the guideline. Λυδαcιτγ 23:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Although I agree with the direction you are taking, I cannot subscribe to your citing already-existing rules to support your motion: the reason for the existence of these may or may not be the same. It is reason that results in rules - so use that base reason in your argument if it applies (and not the rule itself), and new rules may result from your reasoning. Just trying to remain objective. Cheers! THEPROMENADER 23:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreed... but this change wasn't meant to move towards the guideline I'd like (disambiguate city names only when necessary), and in fact goes rather the opposite direction. I would like the it to be true that "The general rule is to name an article about a city or town with a name that does not conflict with any other town or concept as city name", but the rest of the guideline makes clear that this is incorrect, so that sentence should be changed to eliminate confusion. Λυδαcιτγ 23:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
First, regardless of whether this change has any merits, it's good to post a proposal here first to make sure you're not missing anything, then, after a week or so, if there are no serious objections, go for it. I reverted this change primarily because this process was not followed.
Second, now that the proper process is being followed (and thank you for that), here is my input. You are suggesting that the following wording:
The general rule is to name an article about a city or town with a name that does not conflict with any other town or concept as city name. The rest of this naming convention contains guidelines about naming the articles where disambiguation is required.
Be changed to this:
The usual rule is to name an article about a city or town with a name that does not conflict with any other town or concept as city name. Different convention apply to places in some nations. The rest of this naming convention contains guidelines about naming the articles where disambiguation is required.
I object to this proposal because the U.S. guideline is an abomination deviant (from the general Wikipedia naming guidelines) and should never have been approved in the first place, and the proposed wording suggests otherwise, violating NPOV. There is no consensus to keep the comma convention (though there is currently no consensus to change to anything else in particular either). The truth is the renaming of Chicago and Philadelphia were consistent with this general rule.
At most, we might say that the guidelines for some countries, most notably the U.S., have, at least for now, deviated from this general rule. Between you and me, I have faith that logic and reason will eventually prevail.
--Serge 23:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
As I said, I agree that the US guideline is bad, though not strongly enough to call it an "abomination". But as of right now the US section exists, and we need to make the rest of the guideline consistent with it. Otherwise the contradiction leads to situations like this one, where I moved the page, was reverted because of this guideline, argued that this guideline supported the move, was told that it didn't, and finally found the United States section. Believe me, this change is not intended to push the city, state POV, and if you can think of a better wording, please suggest one. Λυδαcιτγ 01:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Serge's argument omits a number of things he knows. Innumerable polls may be found in the archives, most of them started by Serge. It is debateable whether there has ever been consensus against him, but this is largely because the people who want no exceptions and the people who want soe exceptions have split. But he has never had a majority. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I omitted that because it's irrelevant to my point that there has never been a consensus to keep the deviant U.S. city naming guidelines deviant. Never-the-less, I have faith that eventually logic and reason will prevail. It is only a matter of time. Promoting the comma naming convention in the name of being "consistent" is absurd on its face since the comma convention itself is a scheme that is deviant from the general Wikipedia naming conventions. --Serge 17:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Another lie; the "broader WP conventions" explicitly allow for individual conventions to enact exceptions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Look, if everyone wants this discussion to move forward at a decent rate: no more citing "interpretations" of existing "supporting" Wikirules in arguments, but better still, no more citing wikirules at all. Everyone making an argument should have a reasoning for the same, and it is this that we should be discussing. Wikilawyering is one of the reasons this discussion has gone in circles for so long - such tactics are are often dishonest in argument, and often just a method of stonewalling. THEPROMENADER 08:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Promenader, if the broad/general Wikipedia naming principles, rules and conventions cannot be cited as a basis for naming Wikipedia articles one way or another, then what are they for? This project page concerns itself with a subset of the Wikipedia articles ("settlements") and, as such, is subject to the broader guidelines. If you want to question/address those broader guidelines, then you should be having this discussion there. --Serge 17:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I understand that you see existing rules as "tools" to better found your case, but this is a very backwards way of trying to make progress. First we devise methods and test them, and should they work, only then to we set them into rule. If you want to apply the existing rules to the existing methods... well, you'll be going in circles forever. As you have been. THEPROMENADER 21:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
What makes you think that the broader existing general rules were not devised and evolved per the processs you outline? I think we did arrive at them by the very method: First we devise methods and test them, and should they work, only then to we set them into rule. That's why I don't understand why they chose to ignore these tried and true rules for the specific area of U.S. city names. --Serge 21:22, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
The only rule that can apply directly to (settlements) is the rule made directly for the same. "Broader, more general rules" were not made with settlements in mind, and the same (only "interpreteations" of the same) were not at all madw with settlements in mind - especially since settlements are a deviation to the norm! A few seem to be unhappy with the settlement rule (yourself and I, to name two)... what exactly are you trying to say, anyway? Argue through reason, not comparison, if you want to make a solid case. THEPROMENADER 21:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Technical difficulties

Arkyan states above, regarding the current city, state notation, that "It has become so firmly entrenched as a (deviant) standard and spread across so many articles that the task of undoing it would be onerous at best." I think it might be easy if we could do it by bot. If the guideline were changed to just city when there was no disambiguation required, a bot could search through Category:Cities in the United States and Category:Towns in the United States, find articles with city, state notation (most of them), see which ones are redirected to by the city name, and list them to be moved by an admin. Λυδαcιτγ 23:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the easiest way to identify the list of cities that should be moved from [[city, state]] to [[city]] are those for which [[city]] is a redirect to [[city, state]]. Can anyone identify a single city at [[city, state]] (or [[city, province]] or [[city, anything]] or [[city (disambiguation)]]) for which [[city]] is a redirect to that article, but you can cite a good reason for not moving that article to [[city]]? If so, what is that city and what is the good reason? --Serge 00:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
It would not be technically that difficult to do this. I'd be willing to make the modifications to my bot to process this task if there is some consensus to change the naming standard. Of course that still puts the work on an admin to perform the moves - although there might not be that many of them.
I wouldn't have any fundamental objections to removing the unecessary disambiguations. It's the other class of cities that I have a problem with - the ones that require some disambiguation but for which a decision is made to give one of them "important" status and make it the default. Some, like Chicago or NYC may seem obvious and self-evident, but leaving open a broad exemption seems to me only to invite too much room for interpretation and subjective reasoning. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 00:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Going across the redirect creates issues as just because the redirect points at the article it does not mean that it is the only use of that name. Boston points at Boston, Massachusetts, despite there being a number of cities within and outside of the US by that name. Considering the habit of US cities to be named after one another or the cities of other countries, Native American tribes, people, etc, it is likely that a significant percentage of Cityname to City, State redirects would be situations like this. --Bobblehead (rants) 01:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
But if the redirect already points to the article, readers will end up at the article regardless of whether it is moved over the redirect. The only change will be that instead of this:
“Boston” redirects here. For other uses, see Boston (disambiguation).
They will see this:
This article is about the city in Massachusetts. For other uses, see Boston (disambiguation).
Λυδαcιτγ 01:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Considering the amount of work that it took to get Boston, Lincolnshire off Boston and to have the redirect point towards Boston, Massachusetts, I'm not sure moving Boston, MA to Boston is something that can be done via a bot, it'd be difficult to have done on a move request. But anyways, I was responding to Arkyan. --Bobblehead (rants) 01:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone have any technical reason why if there is an article "Word, State" and an article "Word (disambiguation)", that the article "Word" (which might be a substance, a city, or anything else) should not always be the content of "Word (disambiguation)", and all uses should have a longer title either by precision or disambiguating text? My reasons to support this are:
  • WP:PIPE means that editors don't need to type much more, and
  • WP:POPUPS works nicely to fix broken links only if the target of the link is the disambig page, not if the target has {{otheruses}}.
  • Readers can clearly and readily tell if they were directed to the correct article or to an article with the same short name which may or may not be what the author of the linking page intended.
--Scott Davis Talk 02:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean by a technical reason, but this isn't a good idea because often one of the pages linked to by "Word (disambiguation)" is the main subject which most searchers will be interested in, and routing them through a disambig page is undesirable. For example, when I search for "Google" I will be expecting and happy to immediately find this article, as opposed to the disambiguation page. Λυδαcιτγ 05:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
So to paraphrase, your preference for having the primary (short) title redirect to (or contain the article for) one of the meanings is that it assists searchers rather than readers or browsers who have followed links, as the search will result in a single article that (you believe) is likely to be the topic they were actually interested in. Have I got that right? My preference would be that a search should result in a list of possible meanings (either the search results page if the word was not an exact match for an article title, or a disambig page if it is), with the most prominent meanings highlighted by being either at the top of the list or identified in it in an appropriate manner for the list. This allows a searcher to readily recognise that there is an article about what they were actually looking for. The searching reader may not even realise there is a specific article about their topic of interest (a sporting team or university) if they are automatically taken to a general article on a closely related topic (the town they are in). I believe my preference is that described by Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Page_naming_conventions. --Scott Davis Talk 08:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Using your example, a user might search for "Google" and get taken directly to the article Google about the company, without realising there is a Google search article that is the topic they really wanted to find out about. --Scott Davis Talk 08:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Scott, I understand your point, but the idea (which transcends place names) behind "clearly the primary use" for a given topic is that when most searchers enter the given term in the Find box and click on Go, they will expect to be taken to that topic. The tiny percentage who are looking for one of the other lesser uses would have to click on the "for other uses" link at the top of the article. Also, for the searching user who does not realize there are other uses, the same tag at the top of the article will alert him to this. Finally, for the reader who lands on such a topic through a link in another article, the combination of the title of the article being disambiguated (this is key) with the tag at the top tells the reader that this is "clearly the primary use" for that name (and that there are less common uses). So this convention provides value for the reader as well as the searcher. And, again, this is the way all articles in Wikipedia are named. See London, water, chocolate, Paris, and Chicago. --Serge 15:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
You are correct that this preference assists searchers, but keep in mind that many readers start out as searchers (others search with an external search engine or manually enter the URL). In regards to Google, the first text the reader encounters at Google is:
This article is about the corporation. For the search engine, see Google search. For other uses, see Google (disambiguation).
In looking at Wikipedia:Disambiguation, we see that whether the primary article is a disambiguation page depends on whether there is a primary topic: "A disambiguation page is usually named after the generic topic (eg "Term XYZ"). "Term XYZ (disambiguation)" is not the standardized name for a disambiguation page, and is only used when there is a primary topic with an article at "Term XYZ"." Λυδαcιτγ 19:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
If I understand Audacity correctly, the idea would not be to have a bot perform pagemoves but simply to use a bot to find instances of City, State where City is unique, and compile a list thereof. These articles could be forwarded to an admin for moving. Assuming there was consensus here to adopt a new naming scheme along these lines it would no longer be necessary to propose a move, simply give them to the admin to perform. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 04:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Correct, because bots are not supposed to be granted admin powers (although Misza's use of a bot to perform speedy image deletions is apparently an open secret). Λυδαcιτγ 05:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Would an admin be needed for pagemoves? I think one would where a certain page has been moved around so much that all its former locales have page histories... but short of this, a bot could compile a "move list" for a talk page somewhere so that everyone can pitch in on the task at hand. THEPROMENADER 08:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, in cases where there's no page history to overwrite yeah. So if Boston only ever existed as a redirect to Boston, Massachusetts, or Boston had been moved to Boston, Massachusetts without any other edits non-admins would be allowed to perform the move. But if there's any other edit history involved then an admin has to do it. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 14:51, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I trust this will be clear

I strongly oppose any proposal to allow exceptions to the city, state conventions for the United States; unless, as I have done, I explicitly and unambiguously say otherwise. I invite others to say likewise. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I concur with this sentiment. It has yet to be demonstrated what, if any, benefit is gained by deviating from this convention. This naming convention is unambiguous, unbiased, straightforward, logical and from a purely technical standpoint is superior. Creating a scheme that relies upon judgement calls is problematic. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • True, but there are certainly problems with the city, state guideline. Here's two: It's unexpected and deviates from the rest of Wikipedia's naming conventions, and it makes correct wikilinking of major cities more difficult. Λυδαcιτγ 23:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I will concede your first point. It is a deviation from the standard, and my argument for keeping it is, again, based more in technical aspects than anything else. It has become so firmly entrenched as a (deviant) standard and spread across so many articles that the task of undoing it would be onerous at best. As for your second point, I don't see how making sure that a city is followed by a state in a Wikilink is especially difficult. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 23:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • It's not; that argument is of minor importance, and if you agree with the major one, feel free to disregard the minor one. In regards to the technical aspects, let's explore that below. Λυδαcιτγ 23:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Sounds reasonable. Vegaswikian 20:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Like hell it's unbiased. As for the rest of the arguments, are you talking from the standpoint of the convention itself? Stray outside of it, and all your arguments take the chute when compared to conventions in use for the rest of Wiki. But then, it doesn't seem that the above are concerned with the same - only their little corner. THEPROMENADER 22:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming this comment is in response to me. When I say that the City, State convention is simple and unbiased, what I am referring to is that it treats every US city identically, and therefore yes, my arguments are admittedly made from the narrow standpoint of standardization among US cities without regards to naming conventions in other countries. A perfect solution would be able to address all cities regardless of country. Most of the proposed solutions above, however, disrupt the naming convention that is almost universal among US city articles. Giving deference to the US standard is not, in spite of appearances, a bias toward the US, but simply a recognition of the technical aspects. There are over 30,000 incorporated cities in the US, as well as an innumerable amount of unincorporated towns. Whether a satisfactory solution exists to this "problem" of naming standards or not, the notion of throwing to uncertainty the naming of these many thousands of articles - along with the ramifications this has for folks running bots that rely on consistent naming standards for these articles - outweighs any benefit I can percieve in changing the naming standards. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 22:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
"Giving deference to the US standard is not, in spite of appearances, a bias toward the US, but simply a recognition of the technical aspects. "
Aside from the fact that this argument says next to nothing (clearly), it is faulted in that it considers placenames only - what thought for readers reading the rest of Wiki? There is already a standard in effect there for most all of its articles. Why not use the same for everything? Any reason, precisely? Please do not speak of local recognition. THEPROMENADER 23:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Before I reply let me get some clarification - are you referring to the general standard of only disambiguating when necessary, using (parenthesis) as a disambiguator instead of , State, or both? ɑʀкʏɑɴ 23:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
It's actually good that you bring that up: the method of disambiguation is one problem, and what you use to disambiguate is a separate other. Above, true, I was only referring to the method of disambiguation - not the disambiguator. THEPROMENADER 23:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
PMANderson, and Vegaswikian, your preferences regarding the comma convention are well known, including the fact that you oppose allowing exceptions, and tells us nothing with regard to your position to the proposal I made at the top of this page. I am required by Wikipedia policy to assume good faith. In this case that means I must assume that you would not object to noting in the guideline that exceptions are, in fact, allowed, despite your personal distaste for that fact. --Serge 22:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
As I said before, I have no objection to including several actual exceptions. There is no valid reason not to mention the exceptions: they exist. If y'all don't like the fact that they exist, the proper place to take it up is on the talk pages of those exceptions, to develop a consensus to move them back to the "standard". IPSOS (talk) 22:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I am opposed to random generation of location article names. I am opposed to not following a strong style sheet for the naming and layout of location articles. I am only opposed to deviations from city, state without some guidance on when this is justified in some limited cases. Vegaswikian 23:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I am opposed as well to random anything, but again the above does not give any technical justification for "city, state" 's deviation from the rest of wiki. I will not tire to flog this one until honest arguments come forth from all parties - thankfully, at least one has fulfilled this objective criteria to date. THEPROMENADER 23:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
It goes back to the guideline mentioned above. Show us where it is written that using clear and concise article names is frowned on? Why does anyone need a 'technical justification' for using a common name that happens to make sense in a style sheet? Vegaswikian 23:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
No wikilawyering please. Clear and concise for who? - The very people who know that country and use that naming method within the same. This convention was not created with anyone else in mind. THEPROMENADER 08:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Wikilawyering? Since when did using the guidelines to support positions become a negative? This is why people are not interested in this discussion. Oh, for more wikilawyering if you support parenthetical disambiguation, you may want to check out this phrase, it's usually better to rephrase the title to avoid parentheses. Yes, taken slightly out of context, but I believe that the point it makes applies to all places where you have a choice. Vegaswikian 17:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
And exceptions for consistency are commonplace, especially in types of article which usually require disambiguation. Compare, for example, WP:NCNT, which supports both
That is a reasoned argument, but it doesn't support your own: "City, state" is the equivilent of disambiguating the French "Louis I" (of France) as "Louis of Aquitaine": the above uses the very recognisable "country". Still, one cannot use obscure examples to justify such a widespread deviation from the existing system. THEPROMENADER 08:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
PS: For the record, you may notice that Louis I of France now redirects to Louis the Pious - his proper name. THEPROMENADER 09:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes; that move follows the explicit guidance of WP:NCNT that if calling a monarch "Louis I" instead of "Louis the Pious" would be surprising, we should do the latter. Speaking of Colorado Springs, Colorado is not surprising; consider the number of articles that do it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
"Not surprising" to... who? Again, you only seem interested in addressing your countrymen. THEPROMENADER 21:24, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I trust it is unsurprising to English-speaking Kyrgyz, since one of the articles that uses it is Bishkek. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:36, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't see your point. THEPROMENADER 08:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Serge, please stop inventing things. If I were Jimbo, and could arrange things by fiat, there would be a list of a few dosen American cities that would not have state, and a clear test, which anybody could use, to decide which few they were. But I'm not; there is no consensus either on the idea or the test. What little there is consensus on is stated on the policy page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Places in disambiguated US school names

We seem to be encountering a lot of the issues raised here at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools). The current proposal is that school names which require disambiguation should follow the format of these naming conventions guidelines, in other words in case of doubt check the article name to see how the place was named. This method seems to work well for most countries so far. With US schools the normal disambiguation method would therefore be Any High School (White Lake Township, Michigan). (hence my earlier interest in the name). However, if we follow the US article names we get some very odd discrepancies. We'd have Any High School (Los Angeles, California), but Any High School (Chicago) and Any High School (New York City). Some further input on this issue would be most welcome at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (schools). Dahliarose 10:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Wait - why?

Ok, in all the discussion that's recently taken place there's been a lot of heated debate on trying to come up with a worldwide naming standard and a lot of the scrutiny has been placed on the scheme currently in place for the United States.

I have yet to see a real convincing argument, however, that answers the question of why - why must we come up with a single standard for settlements across the world?

I understand the desire for simplicity and consistency. Our policies and guidelines that we currently have do not proscribe against having specialized naming conventions when a need arises, and we have in fact several specialized naming conventions to address topics that are insufficiently covered by more general naming conventions.

It may be that a country like the United States requires specialized naming conventions to satisfy certain needs. Take a look at the political subdivisions of a large country like the US, Canada, or Australia. The average US state is comparable in size to the average sovereign nation. While it may be perfectly acceptable to assert that a single naming convention will be sufficient for Israel, Spain and Belgium, to assert that the same convention it sufficient for countries that are vastly larger and have several times as many cities is baseless.

Consistency and simplicity are good things, but I do not find them to be sufficient reasoning to try and force a single convention upon countries with significantly differing circumstances. Septentrionalis hits it on the head - one size does not fit all. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:23, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you really consider that the digital media that is Wiki is incapable of handling a single method of disambiguation? THEPROMENADER 21:28, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I am capable of typing this reply using my nose, but that does not make it a good idea. I have no reason to suspect why "Wikipedia" is incapable of handling a single method of disambiguation, but that does not make it a good idea, either. Just because it can be done does not mean it should and I have yet to see a truly compelling argument as to why. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
So a unique, easily identifiable method of disambiguation is a bad idea? Why? FTR, answering this point is the point of the discussion above. THEPROMENADER 21:41, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, when it forces editors to pick a compromise between two equally valid solutions. One makes good sense for one subset of countries, the other solution works well for a different subset of countries. To enforce the use of only one solution just for the sake of one solution is a bad idea, yes. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Whither those two solutions? What about the contributors of one country forcing their "own" disambiguation scheme - that echoes their own everyday "local" practices - on an already-existing world-and-media-wide other? This is where I see problems with this method - namely for its narrow-mindedness. Some contributors don't seem to want to understand that there is a world - and media - outside the placenames they contribute to. In fact, Wiki is a world of its own - in any case, it is a unique media. There are many more reasons why a single international publication should use a single method throughout, and the topmost of these is seriousness and credibility. The latter lackings form the base of my misgivings with the present system, actually. THEPROMENADER 22:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
If that is aimed toward me, I suggest you check my edits. I don't think I have ever contributed to Springfield, Illinois; I have contributed at some length to locations in the South of France and the Aegean. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't see what ballistic in my comment there was to aim; it was a statement of simple fact aimed at no-one at all, but perhaps you feel concerned if you promote the method whose shortcomings I am pointing out. There was a single method of disambiguation before people from "country" began to impose their own local method on the "country" articles they contributed to, and even began to pre-disambiguate to further promote the same - is this not true? THEPROMENADER 14:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, not really. If anything, "city, state" was the most common early form of disambiguation for place names. There was no single ur-method. The "decision", such as it was, to pre-disambiguate U.S. place names was a somewhat separate matter. older ≠ wiser 15:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Arkyan, that assumes that the current U.S. city naming convention "makes sense" and "works well" for U.S. cities, but a unified naming convention would not. This is not the case for disambiguating only when necessary. --Serge

I actually find the proposition of a single universal "wiki-wide" naming convention that would of necessity have to be enforced from the top-down on unwilling participants is antithetical how a wiki works. I have yet to see any genuinely convincing evidence that having naming conventions tailored to local usage actually poses a problem. older ≠ wiser 22:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Concur. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
What a foolish straw-man notion. If there is a conclusive discussion, debate and a resulting consensus, those participating in the same will change the Wiki guideline accordingly - the usual, what. Change will come with time. THEPROMENADER 07:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it is impossible to produce a naming convention that would be consistent for all countries. Countries come in all shapes and sizes and what is appropriate for a large country like the US is completely inappropriate for a small country like Luxembourg or an island like Cyprus. There are also huge variants in the local administrative systems for each country and it is impossible to accommodate all of them. I also question the need for disambiguating city names in the first place. Surely this goes against all the principles of Wikipedia naming? I would expect to find London in the namespace for London and Paris in Paris. Either of the two alternatives are either clumsy or unnecessary (eg, London, London, or London, England, and Paris, Ile de France or Paris, France) whether you use commas or brackets. Dahliarose 23:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Dahliarose - you claim that "it is impossible to produce a naming convention that would be consistent for all countries." There are 3 or 4 proposed above (under section headings like Proposal 1a) that seem to do exactly what you claim is impossible. Care to explain how each fails? --Serge
I thought we were discussing the current proposal which seems to suggest that all cities should be disambiguated either by country or state/province/county/canton or whatever. Surely the vast majority of cities should not require any disambiguation whatsoever, especially if they are capital cities and are by far and away the most populous place of that name. Smaller settlements such as towns and villages are another matter whatsoever and local usage is the best determinant of the disambiguator, eg, London, Ontario, but not London (Canada) as in Proposal 1a above. The country is the most appropriate disambiguator for some smaller countries. The state/province is the natural disambiguator for the US. Town/county is generally appropriate for the UK, though city/county often doesn't work for large metropolitan areas, for reasons already stated, especially in large metropolitan areas.Dahliarose 08:42, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Dahliarose, there are several examples above of proposed universal guidelines that would allow for city names to be disambiguated differently based on what's appropriate for the relevant country without having any country-specific guidelines. So the universal guideline would be the same for all countries, but it may still result is disambiguated city names in one country to be disambiguated using a different (whatever is appropriate) disambiguator than in another country. The point is that it should be possible to avoid having a separate guideline for each country. --Serge 19:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I shared Serge's reservations with that phrase when I read it. Declaring that something is impossible does not at all mean that it is - that is the whole point of this debate. Declaring that something is impossible, without saying why, is quite pointless. THEPROMENADER 07:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Bkonrad, what interesting observations! First, no one is asking to enforce anything top-down on unwilling participants! We are seeking to establish consensus - nothing antithetical about how a wiki works in that! Second, asking for evidence about any naming convention posing a problem is arguably nonsensical. A naming convention can be just about anything, even a random string, and would arguably not "pose a (significant) problem" (as long as all the redirects are in place). Having said that, any naming convention that predisambiguates does pose one problem: it obfuscates information about the uniqueness/dominance of the name of the subject of any article within the domain of that convention; information that is inherent in the title of any article within a domain where names are not predisambiguated.
  • If we are using a predisambiguation system, then the title for, say, San Francisco, is:
  • If we're not using a predisambiguation system, then the title is either:
Also, if you accept consistency in naming conventions to be a virtue in general, then lack of consistency between how city names in various countries are handled inherently "poses a problem". In other words, the hodgepodge nature of the project page associated with this talk page poses a problem. --Serge 06:23, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, let me put it this way, my observations are, given the history of the interminable discussions on the subject, that it would be a truly extraordinary feat to achieve a broadly supported consensus position that would apply uniformly for all places in all countries. Without any realistic prospect for achieving any such broadly supported consensus for a grand unified naming convention, discussions in pursuit of such a goal, while perhaps not directly harmful in any way, are, to put it charitably, naive idealism.
Your point about San Francisco seems beside the point. Since when is an article title supposed to encode indications of the city's uniqueness or dominance? As for consistency, if the best that can be achieved is local consistency, then I see no problem with that. Emerson is apropos: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I think it is actually a positive point of Wikipedia that the naming conventions are flexible enough to allow different practices to accommodate varying usage. older ≠ wiser 12:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I think Serge, as often, is confusing permission with necessity. Wikipedians are agreed, here and elsewhere, that when one use of a term is more common than all others, it may be used without disambiguation. Considering the number of entries in San Francisco (disambiguation), it may be a California-centric view that the city on the Golden Gate is more commonly so called than all the others put together (and the saint), even in English; but even if so (and it may well be so), it doesn't mean we have to award it the unadorned San Francisco if we don't want to. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

If by a unified convention you mean discarding the "By country" section, then yes, that would clearly be foolish. What we should be working towards is picking one of the choices PMAnderson listed to apply to all countries:

  1. Never disambiguate except when necessary
  2. Leave a small number without dab
  3. Disambiguate all

An appropriate unified convention might simplify the By country section a bit, but mostly it would change the General rules section, which currently contradicts the rest of the guideline. Λυδαcιτγ 00:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

This would be a little easier to apply as a universal convention, allowing for country-specific methods of disambiguation. It does seem to me though that 2 is really a subset of 3, allowing for certain exceptions to the rule. In any case I believe you are correct, it makes more sense to be focusing on this question rather than the question of a universal disambiguation method. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
However, there is a prior question: do we need to make the same choice among these for all countries? Are Australia and Andorra in the same situation? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think so, but that question still needs answered. I don't think the above discussion pertaining to a disambiguation method is very useful without first answering this one. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 18:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It would be good to be able to have a general rule, for ease of editors and readers - fragmented conventions are a hassle. Arkyan, you said above that the argument of "consistency for consistency's sake" wasn't entirely persuasive to you, but isn't the point of a naming convention to provide consistency? Again, I agree that it makes sense to leave flexibility regarding the method of disambiguation (city, state vs. city, province, etc.), but if we can get an overarching general guideline that would be good. I agree that this point needs to be resolved before we worry about whether to use parentheses or commas in page names. Λυδαcιτγ 19:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I should be more clear. "Consistency for consistency's sake" isn't persuasive in the face of arguments against consistency. If all else were equal then I would say the argument for consistency would tip the scales, but if it is the only argument in favor while other arguments still stand against .. I guess consistency for its own sake is not persuasive when it may prove detrimental in some other way. An overarching guideline as to whether or not to disambiguate by default would be a good thing, if such a guideline can be agreed upon. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 19:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
The only arguments "against" I have seen to date are expressions of choice - and one technical aspect of some instances of longish titles if "Country" is used as a first disambiguation. Could you clarify further, please, with some examples, perhaps? Apologies, but I don't see your point. THEPROMENADER 19:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, I am not going to provide examples. There are numerous examples of instances where a naming scheme for one country would prove problematic when applied to another country. These examples and arguments have been given in the above discussion over the last several days and I feel no need to repeat them yet again. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 19:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
{edit conflict) Are you saying that the style sheets used by most publications are wrong or a bad thing? This is what shapes the look and feel and readability of the publication. The fact that we have so many editors from so many places supports a strong style sheet so that this work does not look like a random hodgepodge. The style should be first and not last. Vegaswikian 19:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Please tell me what statement I made can be interpreted to say style sheets (or consistency) are a bad thing. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 19:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
The fact that you are not even willing to consider even the possibility of any Wiki-wide style already speaks loads for itself. Does the above mean to say that you are supportive of the idea of a Wiki-wide stylesheet? THEPROMENADER 20:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad that you've decided for me what I am or am not willing to consider. Am I supportive of a wiki-wide stylesheet? Most absolutely. However I know of no requirement that a stylesheet not provide alternative styles for differing situations. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
You did refuse to clarify your propos after stating the impossibility of a wiki-wide method, and I aked a question more than anything. You did answer clearly this time, so at least thank you for that. Consistant methods are a great start, but don't forget that we can also think about what to do in certain situations - in explaining them as precise and clear examples - where disambiguation becomes onerous or difficult, and make guidelines for these too. THEPROMENADER 21:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I think everyone agrees that consistency is of definite but not infinite value. So a consistent guideline is desired, but not required. Let's see if there's any possibility of consensus on one of those three options. Λυδαcιτγ 20:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, if we allow that there is no definite agreement about what a "small number" is, then #2 reflects the current situation -- a sort of de facto consensus. older ≠ wiser 20:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
For the US, yes, but there's no guideline establishing exactly what criteria non-disambiguated cities should meet. If this is the consensus, let's establish that and update the policy page. Λυδαcιτγ 20:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, perhaps so. I think when PMAnderson enumerated the three options above, it was in the context of discussing the U.S. convention. As phrased here and in the poll below, it is probably an unnecessarily restrictive option to apply universally. older ≠ wiser 21:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Wider attention

I've just called {{wider attention}} to the "world settlement naming convention" issue. Let's see what the world brings us. THEPROMENADER 21:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I came to this talk page because I was surprised that anyone objected to my moving Colorado Springs, Colorado to Colorado Springs. Having read a fair amount of the above discussion regarding United States cities, my initial thought remains unchanged: the US guidelines add unnecessary complexity to the simple rule of "Disambiguate when and only when necessary." Or, as noted at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft), "A central tenet of wikipedia naming conventions is to give articles names that will have the greatest chance of being directly linked to within an edit window of another article." Proposal 3 seems to me to be the most in line with the rest of Wikipedia's naming conventions (and, as ThePromenader points out, with "every other respectable encyclopaedic publication"). Λυδαcιτγ 06:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, it extends back into the archives; which is why some of us are losing patience. The question is always this:
  • We must disambiguate Springfield, Colorado.
  • What do we do about Peyton, Colorado, which is as unique as Colorado Springs, but smaller?
    • Do we give it the name Peyton, which depends on the non-existence of Peytons elsewhere (and which probably should be the dab page for the surname)? This is unpredictable for readers and editors alike.
    • Or do we call it Peyton, Colorado and have all the towns in its categories look alike?
The proposal to set a line for major or world-class cities, which would have their bare names, has been repeatedly suggested; although I would support it myself, it has never had consensus, and there has never been agreement on what the line should be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I see the complications, but the current discussion seems to be making the perfect the enemy of the good by leaving unchanged a suggested naming for cities like Colorado Springs that is so inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. I'll see if I can get more attention. Λυδαcιτγ 02:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Also compare Fort Carson versus Fort Collins. I like that we can tell easily which article is for a settlement and which is for an army base. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 03:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget that we're discussing a world convention here - the above arguments seems to forget this. When one chooses a U.S. Peyton from a disambiguation page (were it to exist), who's to know that he knows that Colorado is a U.S. state? Are Wiki articles only for the eyes of those originating from the same country as the contributors that wrote them, those already familiar with that country's geography and local jargon? THEPROMENADER 07:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I always put the country name in the disambig page as well - either at the top of a list, or on each relevant line. There's space there to list all needed jurisdictions, and a natural feature as well to help readers know which one was meant. --Scott Davis Talk 09:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Aha. Are "settlement places" always arranged by extra category/country titles on all disambiguation pages? Too bad about the extra work needed. THEPROMENADER 12:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Also, a majority of the links to Colorado Springs, Colorado actually say that at the point of linkage; if we count templates, like {{Colorado}} as one link each instead of dozens, the majority becomes overwhelming. (Templates have extra reasons to be brief, and therefore do not represent natural usage.) Remember, our link is the first mention in the article, and someone reading Bishkek may value the reassurance that Colorado Springs is in Colorado (compare Kansas City, Missouri.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

We "must" not disambiguate in using any single method at all, unless you can explain analytically why that method functions best with the rest of the system it depends upon. Any argument outside of that is but an expression of taste; this is why I find most of this "city, state" argument to be dishonest to its core. THEPROMENADER 07:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Lists of reasons and explanations get ignored, but here are the most important to me (again):
  1. Articles are given a name that is unlikely to need changing on the discovery of more information about other places.
  2. It is easy to distinguish between the many links that deliberately link to the article, and any others which might need to be checked and properly disambiguated.
  3. The title is precise enough that readers can fairly quickly identify what the article is about.
--Scott Davis Talk 09:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
This is exactly what I mean. Unless one can explain technically why the "City, State" comma disambiguation exists while another form of disambigution (parentheses) was already the Wiki standard, then all "technical" arguments supporting that method are moot. THEPROMENADER 11:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
That is easy to explain: It's the way disambiguation and qualification is done for places is done in the real world in the English language. Qualification for people and other things is not as standardized. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 12:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
So the "city, state" convention exists for reasons of convenience, nothing more. This was already clear, but to date it's never been stated clearly as such. One question, though: standardised where, and convenient for who? I still think it's a "local to local" method. THEPROMENADER 13:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
For us, convenience is a principle; it underlies both WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE. Predictability, for readers and editors alike, is one aspect of convenience. Those who would make WP inconvenient and unpredictable do it no service. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
No, that's just more wikilawyering. See above: no need for "technical" explanations if you can't explain your (non-technical) motivations with any honest clarity. If you really did want everyone, from everywhere, to undertand perfectly what they are seeing, you would opt for the format already existing in Wiki - parenthesis. If the "city, state" way of naming things was not already in use everyday (locally, wherever you come from), you would feel no need to impose it here over the already existing method - only for the articles you contribute to. Go figure. THEPROMENADER 22:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Promenader, I answered your question above (the last non-indented paragraph) to explain why I believe it is appropriate to use "City, State" as a standard compared to what appeared to be a proposal for a mish mash of "City", "City (city)", "City (United States of America)", "City, State" and possibly others. If this was not the intent of your question, please state it again clearly and I or someone else will attempt to answer it. Your response suggests you were actually asking why use a standard of "City, State" instead of a standard of "City (State)". In this case, Arthur's response is spot-on. There is no technical preference either way. The "Pipe trick" works equally well for both. --Scott Davis Talk 01:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I was asking one promoting the "city, State" comma'd-convention to give reason for its existence - why this method when there exists already one on Wiki? - and Arthur did answer that quite nicely. Some here are giving "technical reasons" for the existence of the same convention, but I am arguing that these are not the base reason for its existence. It is clear for all that this convention exists for the convenience of those living in the country using that form of disambiguation in everyday life. This is problematic in two separate areas - it does not take into consideration a) the rest of Wiki (parenthetical disambiguation) or b) Wiki readers who are not familiar with that country's regions. THEPROMENADER 09:32, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Springfield (Illinois) is not English; certainly not American English, which it is policy to use in articles on places in the United States. Unacceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but encyclopaedia article headings are never tuned to cater to the jargon of only a particular area. Is English Wikipedia U.S. only, and should the rest of the world bow to its usage - and go through the extra research to comprehend the same? THEPROMENADER 01:35, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
You keep repeating this as if it were actually true. First it is not U.S. only--several other countries have adopted the same convention--presumably with agreement from local contributors. Second, is there any clear evidence that the comma convention poses a demonstrable problem for non-U.S. readers? Third, the converse is equally applicable, why should U.S. usage have to change to suit a relative minority of readers? older ≠ wiser 22:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
It is true, and I don't see how you can suggest that it isn't. A U.S. encyclopaedia may speak of U.S. cities in a way tailored to U.S. readers, but look how they speak of cities of other countries - by indicating what country they are in, before anything else! If Wiki U.S.-city articles are written only for the eyes of U.S. readers (or the same to the same in any given country), then fine, but I don't think Wiki should be that narrow-minded. THEPROMENADER 17:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're saying here at all. older ≠ wiser 17:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Redirects for US place names

Whatever you decide about US place names can I suggest that you write something into your guideline about creating suitable redirect pages for shorter versions of the place name. For example, I was looking for White Lake Township in Michigan. I searched for White Lake Township but there was no article. I initially asssumed that the article didn't exist. I then noticed that there was an article for White Lake Township, Michigan. I've now created a suitable redirect at White Lake Township. I've no idea if this is a single exception or if it is a major problem and there are lots of other apparently non-existent articles which are in fact hiding under a lengthier name. You could conceivably end up with two different articles about the same place. Dahliarose 16:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the one thing no one disagrees with is that in the case where Cityname is unique (as in White Lake Township), whether the article is at [[Cityname]] or at [[Cityname, Statename]], the other needs to be a redirect to the main article. Having said that, I think that this example makes it pretty clear why even places with relatively obscure but unique names should be at [[Cityname]]. Notwithstanding the deviant U.S. city naming guideline, it is much more consistent with general Wikipedia naming conventions, and even general place naming conventions, to have the article be at White Lake Township and making the relatively cumbersome White Lake Township, Michigan be a redirect to the article. --Serge 16:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
This example makes absolutely clear why they should not be at city. Many of the other articles in Category:Oakland County, Michigan, most obviously Troy, Michigan, must be disambiguated; why should some be dabbed, and some not? This makes finding the articles more difficult for reader and editor alike.
This is, furthermore, an invitation to provincialism. We do not appear, yet, to have written an article about an event or a birth in White Lake Township which resounds beyond the borders of Michigan; in fact, almost all the links to it are {{Oakland County, Michigan}}. But when we do, we should call it White Lake Township, Michigan at first reference, which is where we are going to link to it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:50, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
PMAnderson, do you have any points that have not long ago been soundly refuted? Many articles in Wikipedia must be disambiguated, many do not. Those that must be disambiguated, are; those that do not need disambiguation are not. What's the problem? It is not a problem with any other category of article names, why is it such a problem for you with respect to U.S. city names?
Refuted, or that Serge disagrees with? There is a difference. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Refuted. What I agree or disagree with is irrelevant. What matters are the reasons and arguments, objectively evaluated, not who makes them or evaluates them. --Serge 19:42, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
None of PMAnderson's claims have been refuted. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Come on, Arthur. PMAnderson claims that having the article at White Lake Township and White Lake Township, Michigan redirect to it, rather than the other way around, "makes finding the articles more difficult for reader". I mean, that claim is absurd on its face. A is just as easy to find via a search for either A or B as long as the article is at either one, and the other redirects to the article. How is this absurd claim not refuted? Yet PMAnderson continues to repeat it, month after month, year after year. --Serge 20:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
You repeatedly make absurd claims like "this makes finding the articles more difficult for reader and editor alike". Whether a given article is at [[Subject]] and the redirect at [[Subject, Disambiguation Info]], or vice versa, makes no difference with respect to the ease or difficulty in finding the article, or whether Subject is Cityname and Disambiguation Info is Statename, or anything else. This is all beside the point. Whether you've grasped the underlying issues here must be questioned when you repeatedly make such irrelevant points.
As to the provincialism argument, you are again citing something irrelevant. First references to White Lake Township can and should be made as White Lake Township, Michigan so the reader has the appropriate context information and has the option to click on Michigan independently. Besides, whether the first reference appears provincial has nothing to do with how the article is named, for the provincial editor can just as easily link to an article named White Lake Township, Michigan as to White Lake Township. Again, your insistence to make these irrelevant points raises the question of whether you understand the underlying issues. --Serge 18:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I understand your arguments, Serge; I simply am unconvinced by them. I do know the difference. Again, I acknowledge that I have said these things (or most of them) six months ago; so has Serge — the difference being that I admit it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, you have made it quite clear that you are not persuaded by logic and reason. You do acknowledge that you've said these things before, but you don't seem to understand (much less appreciate the significance) that these points have been soundly refuted. I too repeat many points, but only those that have not been refuted. --Serge 19:42, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
      • I am often persuaded by logic and reason; but I am not persuaded by Serge. No matter what he thinks, there is a difference here; especially since most of Serge's refutations have been "I don't understaaand..." Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
        • Again, your focus on who (me) rather than what (the argument) is most revealing. And excuse me for not being able to understand how having, say, the article on White Lake Township be at White Lake Township and the redirect at White Lake Township, Michigan, rather than the other way around, makes it somehow less convenient for the reader, which is what you claim without explanation. Pointing out that such a claim is beyond comprehension and that you can't explain it is refuting it, which you don't seem to understand or appreciate. --Serge 20:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
          • On the contrary, the present system means that readers and editors will know, 99.9% of the time, that the article is located at White Lake Township, Michigan, whether there is a White Lake Township, Georgia or not. A minor, but real, convenience; no one has to go through a dab page; no one has to be redirected; and nobody has to search for White Lake Township, Georgia to accomplish these goods. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Funny how the reader who started this very section did not know (or expect) for White Lake Township to be at White Lake Township, Michigan, and did expect to find it at White Lake Township, and almost started a duplicate article there. More importantly, going through a redirect is not an inconvenience by any reasonable and practical measure. And your dab page point is moot as most of your points are since with either system the reader can always get directly and just as conveniently to the article by typing White Lake Township, Michigan. And the answer to whether searching for White Lake Township alone will take him to the article or to a dab page is the same regardless of which naming convention is used (if it's a dab under one convention, then it's a dab under the other). All your points are once again throughly refuted, but "only" with the use of logic and reason, so you won't be persuaded. --Serge 20:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Any argument of convenience for readers must assume the reader knows something about Wikipedia; in this case, the city, state convention. I regret not making this point explicit. The rest of this "logic and reason" consists of Serge's say-so; but Serge should recall the editor who rejected his proposal because she regarded the tag left to announvr arrival through a redirect as a blemish.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Regardless of whether the user "knows something" about Wikipedia, his experience in terms of convenience is the same no matter which naming convention is used. He's either going to search for White Lake Township, Michigan or White Lake Township and will end up at the same article regardless of which convention is used. This version of the "reader's convenience defense" for the comma convention, this time asserting the assumption that "the user knows something about Wikipedia", is hereby refuted and heaved into the same pile of moot points you keep making.
As to the one person's opinion that having to see the "redirected from" automated tag is a "blemish" I have two points based in logic and reason to make:
  1. A "blemish" does not an inconvenience make.
  2. The blemish works both ways. With the current method, any one who types in San Francisco is currently "burdened" with having to see the "(Redirected from San francisco)" tag. The horror!
And so the "redirected from" message "blemish" defense is heaved off to the ever-growing pile of your moot points. But no doubt you'll have no retort, and yet will probably repeat this thoroughly refuted point some time in the future. --Serge 23:40, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, given how far over this is to the right, I will simply cite Arthur Rubin's post below, which explains the difficulty quite clearly. But I do not expect Serge, or any other special purpose account, ever to admit that those who disagree with him have a point, or that he might have reason to compromise. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
← ← ← ←
|← ←
Like it's so difficult to move the conversation to the left. What a punt. Arthur's point is something else again (and has nothing to do with reader convenience or "the blemish"), and is dealt with below, where it is not refuted, but its significance is questioned. Your points remain moot and/or refuted, skewered by logic and reason. --Serge 00:27, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Fine; Serge Issakov is logic and reason, in his own estimation. Others will differ. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
No, PMAnderson, the arguments and points I present here are based on logic and reason, and yours are not, which I have repeatedly shown. One more point of your has now been refuted: that you are persuaded by logic and reason. You, my friend, most clearly are not. --Serge 01:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Your point is valid, especially from a technical point of view. I doubt though that there will be two articles treating the same subject; those contributing to the same (most probably people from the same city/region) would foresee this oversight - if they don't, then indeed this tendency does expose a greater problem for international readers. "Shortest name (if) possible" is indeed the way to go - and that shorter name should (at least) lead to a disambiguation page. THEPROMENADER 17:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I certainly have no objection to having unique named cities moved to a City format and have City, State redirect to it. As mentioned above the task of idenifying these cities is something that can be done without much difficulty via bot, regardless of whether we have editors or require admins to perform the moves. As stated as well, I do operate a bot and would be willing to assign it this duty after approval from the BAG, however first we need to come to a firm conclusion that we have enough consensus to make this change. There are a copule of minor technical issues that I'll bring up, but hold off on that until we've decided whether or not to go ahead with the City, State -> City where unique idea. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 17:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
And we will have to move them back about once a month, when some other community in a different state or country adopts the name. Will the bot do that too? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Like I said, the bot wouldn't be performing any moves, just compiling a list of articles for moving as administrative attention might be needed. If in the future someone has to move the article back and create a disambiguation page, such is life. Many articles run that risk. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 18:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
The overblown mind-numbing hysteria about the occasional need to move an article to a dabbed location whenever "some other community in a different state or country adopts the name" raises questions about the credibility of those raising such trivial objections with respect to whether they understand the underlying issues. User:Arkyan is correct, many articles run that risk. Why should U.S. city names be any different? --Serge 18:42, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's really necessary to call someone's credibility into question - a concern is raised, and whether or not it turns out to be a valid concern doesn't lessen the fact that they were concerned. Besides, we can disagree without resorting to undermining someone's credibility like that. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 18:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. All of the arguments here are, and must be, differences of minor points of convenience; we are, after all, discussing whether White Lake Township redirects to White Lake Township, Michigan or the other way around. But, such as they are, they do add up to the lesser desirability of the position which Serge insists so strongly upon. Since, however, the convenience of the reader is the end, and WP:COMMONNAME only the means, the advantage of convenience is paramount. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but convenient to who? There are too many here who are concerned with preaching to their own little corner of the world. THEPROMENADER 01:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Arkyan, I'm not calling PMAnderson's credibility into questioning. I'm just pointing out that his repeated making of soundly refuted points does that. Here, while he correctly points out that "we are, after all, discussing whether White Lake Township redirects to White Lake Township, Michigan or the other way around", he still feels the need to say that "the advantage of convenience is paramount", as if the reader's convenience is affected whether we do it one way or the other. I mean, that's just not credible. --Serge 19:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Which equals "Serge doesn't believe it." Others do. This is about par for Serge's "refutations"; surely there must be a better term for sticking one's fingers in one's ears ? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Again who "believes" what is immaterial. What matters is whether there are explanations based in reason and logic for the claims being made. You have no explanation, much less one based in reason and logic, for your claim that a given city article is easier to find for a reader if [[city]] redirects to [[city, state]] rather than the other way around. You claim it's easier to find and "more convenient for the reader, but you don't explain how or why, and I too cannot conjure one. The only reasonable conclusion is that no such explanation exists, for it's a false claim. That makes it refuted. --Serge 20:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Serge's explanation "based in reason and logic" is, in full, "I mean, that's just not credible." Yeah, right. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:07, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, your claim is not credible because it lacks any explanation, much less basis in reason and logic. Certainly none that you can provide. --Serge 21:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict x2, reply to Serge above)
The required moves may be occasional (probably no more than a few dozen a year, if we restrict ourselves to official names of settlements). However, if we not to create incorrect links, the bot would also have to change all links to point to the formerly unique name to the disambiguation page, rather than leave them intact.
The occurrences where an editor thinks that his White Lake Township, GA is the only one, and just specifies White Lake Township, rather than White Lake Township, GA or White Lake Township, MI would be frequent, and virtually undetectable. The possible confusion between Anaheim, California and Annaheim, Saskatchewan, and similar pairs, would be very frequent and virtually undetectable. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Arthur, again, this risk is no different from that associated with any article in Wikipedia which stems from the fact that the most common/simple name is favored for article titles. Why should U.S. city articles in particular deviate from this approach which is so fundamental to Wikipedai? --Serge 19:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) - Actually what is wrong with exceptions? There was an arbcon case about a year ago concerning the names for US highways. The result of the discussion from that arbcon case was that US highways would be of the form 'Foo State Route nnn'. Clearly an exception to the guidelines, but a logical one to many editors. As a part of the process some states were granted exceptions from this standard for various well discussed reasons. Once the dust settled, peace ruled and editors have been busy with other work. So, the fact the US cities have a naming convention, that the rest of the world does not, is not a problem if it is followed. So, clear names are acceptable as is pre disambiguation when part of a guideline. Vegaswikian 19:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Here is the arbcom case, if anyone's interested. I don't see that the highway guidelines are an obvious departure from other naming conventions. But regardless, I agree that it's possible to deviate; however, consistency is a good thing, so deviations should have a good reason behind them. Λυδαcιτγ 20:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
To clarify, that Highway naming situation was more a case of whether to disambiguate by appending the state name in front or by using parentheses, i.e. the disambiguation method rather than whether to pre-disambiguate or not.--Polaron | Talk 20:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
That was an aspect of it, but the end result was in effect mandatory predisambiguation of state highway names. And to enforce names that are not necessarily common names to conform with an arbitrary convention. Another relevant point made in the case is the unanimous affirmation of the principle regarding the use of parentheses for disambiguation: Parentheses are frequently used for disambiguation on Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) but their use is not a required method. This directly undermines the argument of those who claim parenthetical disambiguation is the standard method. older ≠ wiser 00:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
But a big difference between city names and highway names is that every city has a single clear most common name (the name of the city), while highways generally do not. And the statement that the use of parentheses for disambiguation is frequent but not required does not refute the claim that their use is standard. --Serge 01:10, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Kind of counter-intuitive to assert both that there is a "standard" and also acknowledge that the use is not required. In fact, parenthetical disambiguation is only one method of disambiguation. It is very common yes, but it is still only one method among many and it is simply wrong to continue to claim that is it the standard. older ≠ wiser 01:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, this is broaching silly semantics. From m-w.com: "something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example : CRITERION <quite slow by today's standards>". I think it's safe to say that disambiguating with parenthesis has been established by custom and general consent in Wikipedia "as a model or example" for how to do disambiguation, hence it is a standard. At any rate, just because parenthesis are not required for disambiguation does not mean that it's inaccurate to say that using them for parenthesis is standard. --Serge 03:20, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Well you might call it silly semantics since it is a pet hobbyhorse of yours, but nonetheless there exists a thriving multiplicity of acceptable and supported disambiguation methods on Wikipedia -- to imply that parenthetical disambiguation has some special status is incorrect. older ≠ wiser 00:45, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) From what I've seen on Wikipedia, the parenthetical disambiguation method is generally used when there isn't other suitable alternatives. Nike is at Nike, Inc., not Nike (company). Google's search engine is at Google search, not Google (search engine). Apple is at Apple Inc., not Apple (computer), while the other Apple is at Apple Corps, not Apple (multimedia). Of course, Serge will probably note that City, State is not part of a city's official name, but thanks to the postal system, it is a common way to refer to a city, despite not being in the official name. --Bobblehead (rants) 01:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Kind of funny how this just keeps going round and round. And what volumes of discourse it generates along the way. As a minor clarification about what seems to have triggered this current section, White Lake Township is actually not unique. There is a White Lake Township in both North and South Dakota. Wikipedia just doesn't happen to have articles on them as yet. older ≠ wiser 00:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


Arthur Rubin

Well; I think the default for human-named settlements, in or out of the United States, should be that they should include a disambiguator or qualifier, because people tend to name places after other places. I'd accept country-specific guidelines for exceptions to that guideline. I don't have a clear guideline to that effect, or I'd propose it. Probably the best I can do is: All settlements should have a disambiguator or qualifier, unless there is a clear consensus that the settlement is the most common use of the name and that it would be surprising if a more common usage occured. The type of disambiguator used should be country-specific. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, the disambiguator used is the comma convention with the state or province. (In the United Kingdom, settlements are merely left ambiguous, as they are in common usage.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

(De-indented Arthur's proposal; hope you don't mind) I would support this for the United States only, as it seems more clear than the current US guideline, but I can't support it for the entire world. The default use of disambiguation is completely at odds with the rest of Wikipedia. Λυδαcιτγ 19:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
And Arthur's global proposal does raise problems for, say, Germany, where there is a perfectly standard method of disambiguation, but one which does not generalize. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflicted too many times to count) At this point my personal preference is still to maintain the status quo. The naming scheme currently in place for US city articles is acceptable, and changing it to better match more generic naming schemes hasn't got any more tangible benefit beyond "consistency for consistency's sake". I think consistency is good - which is why, if consensus believes we should change it I am willing to work to help conform to a new standard - but when that's the only argument it doesn't feel real compelling to me. Really all I want would be to have some conclusion on the matter, whether we will maintain the "disambiguate by default" scheme or move to a "disambiguate only when necessary" scheme. All I really object to is having a scheme which leaves the door wide open for a broad interpretation of exception to the scheme. If there are exceptions, they should be few and the justifications for them should be narrow. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I hadn't realised that my innocent suggestion would invoke such a frenzied response! From a UK perspective can I just say that most people will have heard of all the main US cities but won't necessarily know which state they're in. To make it easy for people to find these articles it makes sense to me to use a simple easy-to-find and easy-to-link-to format. If I type Boston into Wikipedia I would expect to be directed to the American Boston as it is by far and away the largest place of this name. At the moment if I type in Boston the page is automatically redirected to Boston, Massachusetts, which seems completely illogical. There might well be a case for smaller US place names to follow the town/city, state format, but I see no reason for big cities to do so. It is also impossible to set a worldwide guideline as local usage varies so much. There are many UK places which simply wouldn't conform to the normal town, county format (the nearest we have to the US city, state format). You would end up with all sorts of peculiar combinations such as Manchester, Greater Manchester; Bristol, Bristol (Bristol is both a town and a county), etc, which are quite artificial and aren't in common usage. London places would be a complete nightmare. If Manchester needs differentiating we simply say that it's in England and the same with Bristol. In any case both these cities are large enough not to require the additional disambiguator. Dahliarose 20:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) A possible fly-in-the-ointment is the use of "uniqueness" as a measure. If uniqueness is the mere non-existence of another WP article on a place with the same name, then we're setting up a bit of a homesteading or domain name snatching scenario. Because the existence of articles is heavily biased towards the "first world", similarly named places in Latin America, Asia, and Africa will be relegated to the dab position regardless of whether they are bigger, more important, or whatever - just because they were created second, third, etc. I think that a more holistic approach must be taken. For most European places, we don't dab unless necessary, even municipalities with a few dozen people are at "name" (e.g., Martisberg, Switzerland, 24 souls). Nearly all U.S. places are City, State or City, County/Parish, State, even where the place is the (by far) most notable of the name or even when there's no aparent need to dab (e.g., Anaheim, California). Perhaps a more flexible approach would be that everywhere gets put at "name" unless a need to dab is present; redirects all round. As to where gets preference in a dab, usually this is obvious, for a few places it isn't and choices will get made, and if all else fails "name" becomes a dab (e.g., Guadalajara). Carlossuarez46 20:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Probably not as much of a problem as one might think. The reason for the American English habit which our convention reflects is that names like Springfield or Madison Township occur in several states; but neither of them occurs anywhere outside the United States and the other English speaking countries. There will be some Spanish-named places in the Southwest and Florida, but not that many. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad that you clearly admit that the U.S. convention is understandable only to U.S. citizens. Now, how about thinking about the rest of the world looking for U.S. places? THEPROMENADER 01:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I regret disappointing you; but I did not say, and do not believe, that the U.S. conventions are intelligible only to U.S. citizens. (The UK conventions are a different matter.) I said they were American English; which it is only reasonable to use on American subjects. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
...to be read only by American readers? Again, this is more than a question of language - it is a question of knowledge. THEPROMENADER 17:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
No, it's a straw man. No one has suggested that Springfield, Illinois be read only by American readers; it can be read by Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders... The national dialects of English are mutually intelligible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Polaron

It seems to be that the keeping the "city,state" format but allowing a small number of exceptions is one direction that might be acceptable to all. Can we agree to this and, if there is consensus, how about we discuss which should be exceptions? --Polaron | Talk 20:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Fine by me. I don't know that we will get consensus unless we allow 0 or 1 as possible small numbers. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
{edit conflict} That's been the default consensus position. The problem is defining the guideline for any exceptions. Vegaswikian 20:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Apparently, many interpret the current guideline as "no exceptions allowed". There are places like Seattle that are obvious move candidates but whose move request failed because enough people opposed "because it is against the guidelines". How many U.S. cities have had move requests? Of those, which do you think should not be moved and why? --Polaron | Talk 20:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Like I mentioned before, exceptions can be made for exceptional circumstances, but they should be just that - exceptional. The number of cities that are allowed to occupy City should be limited, and the vast majority of articles titled City, when the name is ambiguous, should be disambiguation pages. I have no real problem with allowing articles to be titled City when they are unique, should another city with that name be discovered later, it can be moved and the disambiguation page created. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
There are three positions: never disambiguate except when necessary, leave a small number without dab, and disambiguate all. Much of the discussion at Seattle, now archived, is the people who believe the last; they're not just interpreting this guideline. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
This is why I suggest the possibility of 0 or 1; the only hope of consensus is a coalition between two of these groups, and the last two are not that far from each other. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Arkyan, I don't quite follow what you're saying. First you say, "exceptions can be made for exceptional circumstances, but they should be just that - exceptional". Then you say, "I have no real problem with allowing articles to be titled City when they are unique". To clarify, would White Lake Township by an "exceptional circumstance", or just another example of one for which you "have no real problem with allowing articles to be titled City when they are unique"? Or would you favor for it to be at White Lake Township, Michigan? --Serge 21:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the confusion. Basically my statement is twofold. One, on the overall question of whether we should be using disambiguation by default or only when necessary, my answer is I don't really care. I prefer the existing method of disambiguating all in the City, State format. However, I have no real problem with going to a disambiguate only when necessary situation, so that when there exists only one of a certain city it can be at City. It's not my preferred solution, but I'm not stringently opposed to it either.
Regardless of which method is chosen, however, I am against leaving broadly interpreted exemptions for "important" cities that get to be at City regardless of ambiguity. For example, there are many cities named Houston, but an argument might be made that Houston, Texas is so preeminent that it should be placed at Houston. My argument is that there should be very few of this type of exception. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay. Thanks. The guideline wording is something like, "clearly the most common use" which would apply to, for example, Paris and water, both of which have dab pages. In fact, you're primarily talking about the general case where [[Subject]] is an article, and [[Subject (disambiguation)]] exists. But this is a very common situation in Wikipedia. Do you think the guidelines and conventions that are used to determine whether a given non-city subject should be at [[subject]] or not are somehow inadequate when subject happens to be a U.S. city? --Serge 23:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm .. no, I see no reason that the generic disambiguation guidelines wouldn't apply here as well. I suppose I just want to ensure that the naming conventions given for city articles don't seem to encourage this behavior any more than general guidelines suggest :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
(son of edit conflict) What's the hurry - is this debate taking a direction not to the taste of some? We've just opened this to wider question - let it ride. There are conflicts between all world places/countries/languages - let's keep the opinions coming. We'll come to a conclusion soon enough. THEPROMENADER 20:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

After reading: I've never seen such a flurry of Wikilawyering. Trying to justify your choice by interpretations of existing Wiki rules (most of them ambiguous or non-sequitur anyways) does not make a case. State your reasoning. Personally I think it stupid to go through all the trouble to create a convention, then to make another convention about "exceptions" to the same. THEPROMENADER 21:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

As has been said before; we have higher-level guidelines so we can appeal to them; if that is Wiki-lawyering, we need more of it, not less. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
No. If you cannot appeal to the reasoning of the rules (without citing the rules themselves) in an argument, then don't bother. Calls to authourity do not a case make. THEPROMENADER 21:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
At the lower levels, the higher-levels rules must be taken as a given, as an authority. That's not to say that the the higher-level rules are not to be questioned. It's just that this is not the place to do it. At the lower levels, the higher level rules are our common ground, if you will. --Serge 21:26, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
The common ground is the standard. Why that standard exists is another matter, but if it exists then the rest of Wiki should follow to maintain media homeogenity (comprehension) for the reader - this is the very reason for the guidelines! It is the reason you should listen to - the rule is only a confirmation of the same. THEPROMENADER 21:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
When you say "the standard", what exactly are you talking about, if not the higher level Wiki rules? What is "the standard" if not the "existing Wiki rules" which you discount the value/significance of above? --Serge 23:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
The standard, of course, is the system already majoritarily in use throughout the media. Rules are only an explanation of that system for a guideline for future contributions.
When I say "media", I mean "all of Wiki". A practice dominant only in "country corners" does not even consider the same. THEPROMENADER 08:30, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

subheadings for certain Wikipedians

Excuse me - why the sub-headings for certain wikipedians? Is there some sort of longstanding hierarchy that indicates that the comments of some deserve more attention than others? This is quite un-wiki; I suggest you re-format according to subject. THEPROMENADER 21:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I believe it is an attempt to delineate where someone has made a pseudo-proposal. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Then indicate it as such. As a second proposal. Wikipedian names are not this. THEPROMENADER 21:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Please read the archives. We debated "Tariq's proposal", so called, for months. If either of the Wikipedians can boil their ideas down to a subhead, they should feel free to change them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I could really care less who discussed what, or when. Anything worth discussion should already be here to read in this new thread - or do you feel doomed to repeat yourselves eternally? I can see that this would be convenient to some who would not have things change. THEPROMENADER 21:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, yes, I confess that Serge and I are conspiring against you.</irony> But objecting to a naming practice as unWikipedian, when this page has already used it really seems implausible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Who said anything about conspiracy, or me, and when did I say a practice was "un-wikipedian"? Please don't put words in my mouth. My only criticism is about the quality of the debate - by poring over your rule-books in search of all and any support for biased "sides", you are accomplishing the exact opposite of a reasonable discussion. What is the purpose of your choice in Wiki, and how does it fit in? Neither of you have managed to describe this clearly - or you refuse to think of it at all. A few of you don't really need any argument at all, because your method enjoys the status quo in your little corner - so disrupting or disregarding any new discussion is only useful in preserving the same. Making out those not sharing a same point of view to be crazy conspiriationists helps too. Now, can we get back to a more mature, organised and reasonable discussion please? THEPROMENADER 08:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Promenader, since you appear to have a particular standard for how people should present their opinions and views, could you please make a list of which arguments (for any side) you accept, showing the reasons in the way you believe they should be presented? I'm now completely confused what you accept and what you regard negatively as "wikilawyering" in an unacceptable manner, as distinct from validly referencing other policies, guidelines and conventions. I expect most of us believe we have validly presented our opinions, with reasons, so if there's a formal style we should be following, we need to see examples. I've forgotten what your own view is, if you presented one. Thankyou. --Scott Davis Talk 13:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
No time to answer in any detail now, but you're right in noting that I've given up, for the time being, promoting any particular argument to turn my attention first to the quality of the debate itself. What dismays me most is the method of argument rampant here: many are cherrypicking rules and technicalities to support their pet method - without ever attempting to explain the reason for the method's existence in the first place, or even consider other methods (in any non-put-down way). This is a rather backwards, forever-in-circles way of debating, don't you think? I hope I was clear. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 15:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I have tried to stay out of the personality disputes, and had actually noticed that (until the last couple of days, at least) the participants appeared to be acting better this time round than previously. I suspect that most of us are trying to do both: ground our opinion in the existing policies, guidelines and conventions; and also explain the reasons why we hold that position - I certainly have been, and I don't think I'm alone. The problem is that different people have different opinions of the value of each kind of argument, and worse, since we all think our view is obviously right, we only need to make a quick reference to the reasons, because everyone will agree :-) Do you want to propose some sort of tabular summary? I recall someone a few months ago attempted to summarise the arguments so far. --Scott Davis Talk 08:34, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I hear you on the personality issues - it would seem that some here even expect all to recognise and respect the (most probably very long-standing) roles of the principal actors in this debate. I don't see how this can help the debate any.
I'm also all for your idea of listing each proposition (in form, not explanation, with a "pro/con" list underneath that can be edited by all. Of course a few will be very inventive in their support for their "own" propositions, but to be fair, a pro or con reasoning should be applied to all other examples if possible (for example: "intuitive linking") - this would bring at least some semblance of balance to the argument. To keep things coherent to the (direly needed) newcomers to the disussion, discussion on each point should be below the complete listing section (so that the listings themselves won't be lost in the ensuing discussion). I also suggest that we discuss the merits of each "pro or con" listing under each proposition - if they are vague, or "interpretations" of existing rules, they should go. Reason alone is enough to bring this debate to an honest and conclusive end.
I don't have time to do the whole thing, but I'll set the framework up with a couple examples, if you don't mind. THEPROMENADER 10:45, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Timely re-opeining of the "US" issue?

I do find it strange that, while we are attempting to open a "world convention" debate, that the "U.S. - only" question resurfaces in ignorance of the same. Yes, I understand the point of your exigences/questions, but their timeliness seem to deny/waylay any possibility of a world convention. Patience, perhaps? THEPROMENADER 22:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

World-(wiki)-wide (settlement) disambiguation scheme: Pros and Cons of existing/proposed methods

This section should remain a listing - do not cut it up with commentary please; instead use the discussion section reserved below. The validity of each "pro" or "con" statements are also subject to discussion, and the same in one should be applied to all if at all possible.

  • Addendum - For the sake of debate clarity, please sign your comments - three tildes (~~~) will suffice.
  • On second thought, not - there are certain predjudices rampant here that may corrupt the debate. Feel free to post in cowardly anonymity ; )
  • If you wish to express an opinion on a pro or con comment (if noone has done so before you), cut and paste the comment in the section reserved below, "bold" it, and add your comment below it.
  • For clarity of debate, let us consider that the below propositions/methods are examples of needed disambiguation only. Also for the same, let us consider temporarily that all locales will be disambiguated, again only when needed, without exception.

Methods of Disambiguation

City, Higher political division

Higher political divisions vary by country and include areas like: State, Province, Region, Country, Territory

pro
  • intuitive for people from the same region as the article
  • Predictable for all readers, as soon as they see that this is our convention, either by consulting this page or by experience.
  • Explicitly authorized by our naming conventions.
  • Standard American/Australian English usage.
  • Unlikely ever to require further moves (unless the town in question itself changes name, in which case any naming system would move it).
  • Natural running text is say that Abraham Lincoln "moved to Springfield, Illinois", as that article now does; it thus makes linking "easy and second nature", which Wikipedians are agreed is a good thing.
  • Makes categories like Category:Sangamon County, Illinois uniform, which looks professional.
  • Specifically used in the Manual of Style for place names.
  • Meets the guideline for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) to name places with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
  • Supports a strong style that results in unique, unambiguous article names which reduces future conflict over what article belongs at city names.
  • Less confusing and more natural for many readers then a parenthetical qualifier.
  • Appears to conform with the Universal Postal Union international address standards.
  • Articles are given a name that is unlikely to need changing on the discovery of more information about other places.
  • It is easy to distinguish between the many links that deliberately link to the article, and any others which might need to be checked and properly disambiguated.
  • The title is precise enough that readers can fairly quickly identify what the article is about.
  • disambiguation conforms with the method already in use in most all of Wikipedia - a unique disambiguation method can easily be recognised as such.

con
  • is a deviation from the already-existing wiki-wide method of disambiguation (parentheses) - may or may not be recognised as disambiguation.
  • non-intuitive, even confusing, for readers foreign to the article region who do not know where "State" is (or even what country it is in).
  • In some, quite rare, cases, it fails to disambiguate; but we have a provision to cover that.
  • City, state is in itself confusing as only the US and Australia have states. The term state itself is confusing as it can often by synonymous with country.
  • The equivalents to the US city, state convention generally don't work. The UK, for example, has counties and London is both a city and a county, but the form London, London is never used. Switzerland has cantons but Lausanne is described as in Switzerland not in the canton of Vaud. Similarly, Jordan has governorates but Amman, Amman Governorate, would be quite ridiculous.
  • In the UK administrative borders change all the time, so county (the nearest UK equivalent to state) would not be a stable disambiguator. (The city of Bristol for instance has been in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Avon. Now it is both a city and a county.)
  • English WP policy is that articles should be written in the dialect of English appropriate to the subject of each article. Applying this naming convention world-wide may violate that policy for settlements in some places (especially places where the most common local language is not English).
  • Articles about settlements in extremely large countries need to be dealt with differently than extremely small countries.

City (Higher political division)

pro
  • disambiguation conforms with the method already in use in most all of Wikipedia - a unique disambiguation method can easily be recognised as such.

con

City (Country)

Disambiguate only when neccessary. If further disambiguation is needed, use a suitable disambiguation in addition to "country":
placename (region, Country).

pro
  • The normal way to disambiguate for most European, African and Middle Eastern towns and cities (eg, London, England; Paris, France; Lausanne, Switzerland; Nairobi, Kenya; Amman, Jordan).
  • disambiguation conforms with the method already in use in most all of Wikipedia - a unique Wiki-wide disambiguation method can easily be recognised as such.
  • Using "country" as a first-choice first-level disambiguation is informative to those who cannot be expected to know a country's states or regions, even before they know the country the settlement resides in.

con
  • not American/Australian English usage.
  • Fails to disambiguate for US cities. See Springfield.
  • Fails to consider additional disambiguation needs for geographically large countries such as the United States and Canada.
  • Not German or French usage; why should we reinvent Saint-Germain-en-Laye or Rothenburg ob der Tauber?

Discussion

City, Higher political division

Meh. The "cons" being mentioned here are of minor importance. A reader who arrives at City, State and is confused in not knowing where state is will be no less confused if they were to arrive at City (State). Furthermore, for the vast majority of city articles, readers will either have arrived there intentionally or via a wikilink from a related geographical area and are unlikely to experience this "confusion". Finally, the vast majority of readers from primarily English speaking countries will find the City, State convention familiar (or at least understandable) and are unlikely to become confused. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:38, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

No more, no less, but confused nonetheless. Also, one would not think that a deviation from the already-standard disambiguation scheme would be "minor". Keep in mind that the pros and cons listed are not comparisons with any other method per se, but indications of the merits/weaknesses of the method itself. I don't think that one can count on those from, say, Gloucestershire, knowing that U.S. Carson City is in Nevada and that the latter is a U.S. state - especially when the same could be clearly indicated in the title - and that only if disambiguation was needed for the same. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 18:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I believe we can count on someone from Gloucestershire knowing that Carson City is in Nevada - the first line of the article tells them as much. It is practically universal among US city articles to state "City is a city in State" - or some variation thereof - in the first line of the article. I don't believe that the worry over people becoming confused by a title in the City, State format is well-founded. It seems to me more of an imagined problem rather than a real issue. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 18:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
With that logic, then, it wouldn't matter at all what form the article title took. So why not use the same format for all Wiki? THEPROMENADER 21:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Should we even consider "may well" as a serious "pro" for this case - or an encyclopaedic standard ? THEPROMENADER 21:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Since WP:NAME expressly provides that individual conventions may override most common usage for such purposes as consistency, "deviation" is a lieterminological inexactitude. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:53, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
As a former resident of Gloucestershire I'd never heard of Carson City before. I wouldn't have had a clue which state it was in but it doesn't really make any difference so long as I can find it if I type in Carson City into Wikipedia. Dahliarose 20:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The complaint that the City, State convention "generally does not work" is founded on logical fallacies. Firstly, the examples given to demonstrate it is a faulty convention are exceptions and not the rule. The city of London may be its own ceremonial county - but it is the only city that falls under this category. Secondly, the complaint that the term "state" is unique to the US and Australia is silly - it should be implicitly understood that this would become City, Province in Canada, and so on. It's also silly to imply that no other countries use states. Mexico, Brazil, India, and several others use state or a native-language equivalent. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:50, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I can provide plenty of other examples if you want. Bristol is a city and a ceremonial county. Manchester is now in Greater Manchester but is never described as such in everyday usage. For differentiation purposes it is Manchester, England. Lots of countries have very obscure administrative divisions equivalent to state, province, county, etc. I wouldn't even know what the French and German equivalents are called. In everyday British English usage, French and German place names are qualifed by country, as are those of most European countries. Dahliarose 21:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
There is no reason why "Higher political division" can not be "Country" in situations where a division by a lower political division would not be appropriate, but then you run across issues where a city name is reused within a country, so using your Manchester example, it could be Manchester, England or Manchester, United Kingdom, whichever is most appropriate for the UK. --Bobblehead (rants) 21:46, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
In theory yes that would be fine. However, with large cities such as Manchester I don't see any reason why they should ever need to be disambiguated. Dahliarose 23:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on individual points
  • Predictable for all readers, as soon as they see that this is our convention, either by consulting this page or by experience.
- "All" readers? Do all know U.S. States? Are other countries treated in the same manner? Your statement does not even try to consider these.
  • Explicitly authorized by our naming conventions.
- "Our"? The U.S.' ? Now how about discussing an international wiki-wide convention? THEPROMENADER 08:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, "our" = "of this en: wikipedia". Does anyone else see this "misunderstanding" as passing the limits of good faith? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • English usage, certainly in the local variety of English (which we encourage for these articles), and probably worldwide.
- "Probably"? Are you serious in putting this here? What has language to do with origins - shall we assume by this that all English-speakers know all "states" of every country the world over - should they even exist? THEPROMENADER 08:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
- Um, the variety that lies with those from other countries who don't know that Springfield is in Illinois, or even know that Illinois is a U.S. state. Is the world expected to know U.S. states by heart? This is an international question, not a national one. THEPROMENADER 08:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
And which one would that be? Why should we fashion policies for figments of the imagination? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Figments of... what? What is there not to understand in my question? Do you really expect the whole world to know every region and every jargon of every country on the planet? THEPROMENADER 19:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, I expect every user of this Wikipedia to be able to read English, American, Aussie, or Kiwi, at least far enough to be able to find an explanation. The claim that any of them uses anything other than "Springfield, Illinois" for the capital of that state is more empty speculation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Most English speakers have at least heard of The Simpsons, and many of those will know it is set in Springfield, USA, fully aware that Springfield is not necessarily in Illinois. --Scott Davis Talk 22:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) And you expect every reader to know local geography and disambiguation methods? Again, this is not language. If I want to find a Pembroke in England, I'll search for those two words and have a clear and orderly list if there are many there. Hey, there's another "pro" argument for the city (country) proposition... but again, I don't see what there is to not understand here. THEPROMENADER 23:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Even I had no idea that Springfield was in Illinois. THEPROMENADER 23:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Unlikely ever to require further moves (unless the town in question itself changes name, in which case any naming system would move it).
- "As long as we maintain the majority" (in this little corner of the world, anyway) is all this is saying. This is not a "little corner" question - it concerns all Wiki.THEPROMENADER 08:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Also, this "argument" is in no way supportive of the method itself - it doesn't even mention it. THEPROMENADER 08:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Natural running text is say that Abraham Lincoln "moved to Springfield, Illinois", as that article now does; it thus makes linking "easy and second nature", which Wikipedians are agreed is a good thing.
- Natural for who? We are taling about a world convention here. Let's not declare perhaps even inventive "others who agree" to share our views - the debate is here.THEPROMENADER 08:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps in your own little corner of "Wiki world", but Wiki covers many more subjects than that. Are you saying that the "city, state" convention should be applied to the entire world? Short of this, exceptions to an already-standing wiki-wide disambiguation method does not at all look professional.THEPROMENADER 08:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Rules resulting from debate and consensus are article-writing guidelines. We presently in a debate whose goal is to change the rule or make a new one. Shall we chase our own tails? THEPROMENADER 08:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • 'Meets the guideline for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) to name places with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
Again, second nature to who? We seem again to be talking about locals writing articles in a local language. THEPROMENADER 08:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and who do you suppose it is that contributes much of the material on Wikipedia? We encourage people to write about what they know or are willing to learn about -- and for many people, that is material of local interest. Why should they be expected to conform to some artificial standards based on the rhetoric of "internationalism"? older ≠ wiser 12:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
You mean, should we all speak a common language instead of trying to communicate in (stubbornly) preserving our own lingo? You have heard of Babel, haven't you? THEPROMENADER 14:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
This is the English Wikipedia. As far as I know, no one is advocating that we use some other language. But there are variations in usage within the English language, and Wikipedia does not generally attempt to prescribe "correct" usage when there are multiple correct alternatives. No one has yet presented any convincing evidence that the absence of a grand unified naming convention for places poses any serious impediment to readers. The specter of "Babel" is empty rhetoric. older ≠ wiser 14:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Of course we're all speaking English here, but if we're communicating in a terminology unfamiliar to our readers it amounts to the same thing: an unneeded glitch in communication. THEPROMENADER 17:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
So do you have some hard evidence that there is in fact any "glitch in communication" or is it just speculation on your part? older ≠ wiser 19:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Do you think that an inhabitant of Pembroke knows the county/state of the other world's pembrokes, or even what country the latter are in? Forget the example; are the inhabitants of one country obliged to know the geography of another in order to find one of its cities? I cannot make this any clearer. THEPROMENADER
I don't see how it makes any difference at all what an inhabitant of Pembroke does or does not know. How is that in any way relevant? [A]re the inhabitants of one country obliged to know the geography of another in order to find one of its cities? No, of course not. Why should they? But they should be able to find the article with a minimum of effort regardless of what naming convention is used. I'm afraid what you think of as clear is not that at all. older ≠ wiser 23:04, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
The precise subjects of my example wasn't important, but their respective country of residence was.
Let's be clear then. I'm looking for a city called "Cambridge" in the U.S., and I don't know what state it's in. What will my search terms be?
Yet another thought. I'm not sure how the search function works here, but in engines such as Google, results where the search terms are in the title are given the most importance. THEPROMENADER 13:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Supports a strong style that results in unique, unambiguous article names which reduces future conflict over what article belongs at city names.
Perhaps within a single country, but together with the rest of the world's placename articles, things look pretty messy. Did I mention that this was an international debate?
  • Less confusing and more natural for many readers then a parenthetical qualifier.
How can you say this without saying why? Parentheses are the Wiki norm; parentheses are the most-used (thus most easily identifiable) form of disambiguation in use in most every publication today. THEPROMENADER 08:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
parentheses are the most-used (thus most easily identifiable) form of disambiguation in use in most every publication today. -- how can you say this without any evidence. I'm not sure what publications you read, but parenthetical disambiguation -- especially when applied to place names -- seems relatively uncommon in my experience. Do you have some evidence that the publishing industry endorses parenthetical disambiguation? older ≠ wiser 12:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm, touché. I'll try to find evidence for that. For now I've got a Larousse and Britannica encyclopedias here; the former uses parentheses, and the latter has its own method: parentheses for "other article" inclusion ("Paris 1900 (from 1900 Olympics)"), commas for "alphabetical order" reformatting ("Paris, treaty of"), and placenames have no disambiguation at all. More on this later. THEPROMENADER 14:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Cherrypicking any and all supportive obscurities to the extreme. What has coordinating post-office usage between themselves have to do with any of this - are we sending each other letters? Is this organisation's guideline used and referred to by the majority of international reference publications? I think not. THEPROMENADER 08:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
This non sequitur comment should go.
  • English WP policy is that articles should be written in the dialect of English appropriate to the subject of each article. Applying this naming convention world-wide may violate that policy for settlements in some places (especially places where the most common local language is not English).
I dislike this comment just as much, if not more, than the weak or non-sequitur "pro" comments. This is wikilawyering in tis extreme - and it means nothing! What is the point of citing "dialect of English" as a "supporting" rule - it is so vague as to be "interpreted" to support either a pro or con argument. This is why I ask tha we not cite rules, only reason. THEPROMENADER 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
We still don't strike comments because one editor disagrees with them. On the merits, most Wikipedia policy has become so because large numbers of Wikipedians agreed with it. The reason for that particular consenus is to maximize communication and avoid silly Anglo-American edit wars; this applies here too. In any case, claiming to make a decision here which contravenes what many Wikipedians agree on would be both obnoxious and futile; the way to see whether Wikipedians still agree with the policy is to try and change it. T Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
First off, it's not a question of "like", it's a question of non sequitur inapplicability - and polluting a list of what should be thoughtful or at least honest arguments. Yet have I stricken anything to date? Did I not open this "point by point" section just to avoid doing the same? Please don't try to paint my comments with intentions they've never had. THEPROMENADER 19:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Then learn to express yourself in English — any national variety of English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Great, insult my English - that's taming the debate. Chill out, and try some rational arguments for a change; denigrating those who don't share your point of view is not a step in this direction. THEPROMENADER 23:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Articles are given a name that is unlikely to need changing on the discovery of more information about other places.
Sounds like it means something about pre-disambiguation, but gobblegobblegobble. Clarify, please? THEPROMENADER 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Not my point, but the meaning seems clear enough: If an article is at White Lake Township, Minnesota, it won't need to be moved when we write White Lake Township, South Dakota. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
That's pre-disambiguation in a nutshell - and another debate. Ten-four. THEPROMENADER 18:18, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It's only pre-disambiguation if that's what you want to call it. It's also be as precise as necessary. --Scott Davis Talk 22:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It's pre-disambiguation no matter what you call it. You can argue that it is also "be precise as neccessary" (even when the neccessity itself is arguable), but we can't say that it is either one or the other. THEPROMENADER 13:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
  • It is easy to distinguish between the many links that deliberately link to the article, and any others which might need to be checked and properly disambiguated.
- What is "deliberately linked"? If we link to another disambiguated article, more often than not we don't see the disambiguation, and this method is always "deliberate". How can we link by "accident" - do you mean "carelessly"? Searching and reading/creating disambiguation pages is another matter. THEPROMENADER 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Editors do not accidentally create a link to Word, State except in a few odd cases, but they do accidentally create links to Word, without checking and inadvertently linking to a disambig page or the wrong meaning of Word. If you're not convinced, have a look at how the links to Whatlinkshere/Georgetown or Whatlinkshere/Cork. There's a maintenance project about this problem. --Scott Davis Talk 22:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The title is precise enough that readers can fairly quickly identify what the article is about.
- Is a state "fairly easy" for every reader, anywhere in the world, to identify? Answer honestly, please. THEPROMENADER 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
In the context of the title of an article in Wikipedia about a place, where that title contains exactly 1 comma, then yes, a state is fairly easy to identify. If the domain is further reduced to large federated English-speaking countries, the answer would be "almost certainly", with the possible exception of some US Americans who have not really noticed the world outside their own boundaries. Most of the rest of the world have some awareness of global geography. We may not be able to list all the provinces of Canada or states of the USA, Australia or South Africa, but we have some clue that the word might be one, especially in context. --Scott Davis Talk 22:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


...Did I miss writing "World convention" up there? Thanks for corrupting a demand for honest reason in answer to a valid question. I move to remove all of the above, namely because they do not at all even consider the Wiki-wide question. THEPROMENADER 20:45, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

  • You might have averted some of the confusion by explicitly stating "World convention" - your wording is "wiki-wide convention". Minor, but some people nitpick. Anyway, in the spirit of open discussion, you cannot strike or otherwise remove someone's honest opinion. You may disagree with it, as you have done here in the discussion, but as this is not a "vote on which pros we like" they ought not be removed. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
    • The above comments did not even attempt to address a world or wiki-wide convention - this is why they are invalid in this discussion. I hope you see my point. "Wiki-wide" is even greater than "world-wide" (as it covers all subjects even), but point taken - title clarified. THEPROMENADER 21:07, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Nonsense, they are good reasons for America, Australia, and (changing to province) Canada. I see the Russians have a similar system.
      • I agree that they do not apply to Germany or France; one size does not fit all.
      • They are in fact some of the reasons why I strongly oppose any world-wide convention. Different countries deal with the problem differently. By and large, English follows local usage (for English-speaking countries, we define English as being local usage). We should, as with AD/CE and color/colour, leave local usage alone. Our present convention says so; and we should not change for it for the imaginary complaints invented by our doctrinaire. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Not nonsense at all - you can't place arguments for a few as arguments for all.
So you openly subscribe to a "local to local" method. Are all Wiki readers "locals" to the articles they search for, and read? THEPROMENADER 21:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
  • If you want to call writing articles on American places in American; British places in British English; Australian places in Australian, "local to local", then, yes, I openly support it; so, I believe, do most Wikipedians. If you wish to revise that preference, you are in the wrong place; go to WT:MoS and suggest revising WP:MOS#National varieties of English. I see no benefit in speaking of the "color of London busses", thank you. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
That attempt at an argument is apples to oranges - i is clear that I made no argument anywhere near in meaning to your statement above. Please do not pooh-pooh nonexistent counter-arguments; this will not give credit to your own. THEPROMENADER 21:36, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Then would you mind defining the term you invented? If "local-to-local" does not mean writing American articles in American and Australian articles in Strine, what do you mean by it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I mean "local" contributors (to articles on places in/near their own country/placename) naming articles - in a way they see fit - in a way that is best recognisable to those living in the same country as they. THEPROMENADER
For English-speaking countries, I support that; with "locality" being country. (I thought I just said so.) Non-English-speaking countries really should do the same, on their own Wikipedias. When we cover non-English-speaking countries, we should do what English does, which is often (but not always) to adopt local usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:41, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
You've invented your own interpretation of "local usage": the term refers to words ("oblast", etc, and official translations) and not methods of disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 07:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, were we to agree to that logic, the title of every "placename" article would be published in its own local jargon. Can one really think this logic worthy of an encyclopaedic publication? The result would be a reference that doesn't seem give a (expletive) about its readers finding its articles. THEPROMENADER 07:19, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Promenader has invented not only his own definition of "local usage"; but his own rules of debate. If he knows so well what an "encyclopedic publication" should contain, he is welcome to host a fork of the whole of Wikipedia, and rearrange it to his heart's content. For my part, I find further discussion in this vein futile. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
That is neither a reasonable nor constructive reply. What do you not understand about people writing about their own home towns in their own local language - do you deny that this trend exists, and did you not just admit this yourself? Let's not confuse "taste" with "reason". As for the rules of debate, is there anything wrong with trying to develop a method of keeping a debate focused and coherent? Or would you rather that we spin in circles as you seem to have done since years already? I can understand that this could be to the benifit of some. THEPROMENADER 14:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I understand the tendency for people to write about their home towns in their local language - and by and large I approve of it; the alternative is to attempt to impose a World English of our own invention. Local writing has its dangers, chiefly the acceptance of a POV of local pride; one form of this is the proposal: we're a world city, we don't need no stinking disambiguation!, seen most recently on Talk:Minneapolis, Minnesota, but most Wikipedians prefer it to the alternative, while controlling the PoV-mongering.
In any case, this is not the place to propose an English Koine; that would be WP:Mos#National varieties of English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
<===

That is exactly why I proposed to leave the "no-disambiguation top-dog city" question out of this debate; this will create "exceptions" to almost any convention of any form.

Again an ironic and baited reply that insinuates a meaning that no-one even hinted at. Best refine your reasoning skills instead of trying to (inaccurately) cover those who don't share your point of view in ridicule. If there is reason behind your stance, you will be able to show it. For the time being, I see suggestive rhetoric and taste more than anything. THEPROMENADER 15:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

If you don't want your rhetoric taken seriously, tone it down or use emoticons. It was not I who dragged in the Tower of Babel; and without the shadow of that hideous strength, I don't see what the problem is with writing local articles in the local language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:29, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Hmm - you're giving things gravity that have none, and completely missing my point. Every region of the world, even English-speaking, has its own geography and jargon. Are we expected to learn all of them before we can effectively consult this... encyclopaedia? THEPROMENADER 17:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes. Go argue with the Manual of Style, which says so. English isn't as diverse as all that, however. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, rather, it's not just "language". How can you expect the entire world to know by heart every region of every country, and each's method(s) of of talking about themselves? THEPROMENADER 18:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, we shouldn't expect the entire world to know by heart every region of every country, and each's method(s) of of talking about themselves -- that's ridiculous and it does not bear even a remote resemblance to what anyone here has suggested. What we should expect is that the articles themselves contain sufficient information and context and links for a reader to understand whatever localized idiosyncrasies might be involved with that topic. older ≠ wiser 20:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I know that I exaggerated there, but the "every country its own method" (and local-level-only disambiguation) is a great stride in this direction - I don't consider it to be any sort of conspiracy, rather a "blank-out" by certain contributors who never thought to think about any articles outside the field (country) of those they already contribute to, nor to Wiki readers, nor about how this disparity looks for Wiki as a media as a whole. I also undertstand that there is no ill-intent behind this; I think it, although a bit naïve, rather natural even; yet although leaving this "everyone for themselves" trend unnoticed is one thing, fervently defending it is quite another. I am convinced all is needed is a clear "wake up" call to get everyone together finding solutions for the Wiki media as a whole. THEPROMENADER 22:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
There is no evidence that any of the contributors to this conversation "never thought to think about any articles outside the field (country) of those they already contribute to". Please stop arguing with straw men, and express yourself, for once, clearly, precisely, and without exaggeration. The nature of a wiki is that you will be taken as meaning what you type. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Why should they think about it if they don't have to? Yet here we're asking people to do exactly this. Are you insinuating that we've missed something in all I've said - what's not to understand in any of it? THEPROMENADER 22:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I am disappointed that after having campaigned that the rules of the debate should be improved and followed, Promenader has defined skewed rules and taken to arguing against almost every point repetitively, vexaciously and without listening to the counter arguments. This is the exact behaviour we used to dislike from Serge, who this time round has realised that it doesn't help the overall discussion and improved his behaviour. Thankyou Serge. --Scott Davis Talk 22:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Direction, not rules. Okay, I am getting rather miffed at the stonewalling going on here by those whose comments in this debate ignore completely its very purpose. But where am I breaking the rules, and how are they "skewed"? Anyhow, I'm just repeating myself, so enough for tonight. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 23:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Since Promenader has never made clear his purpose, and has spent his time engaging in evidence-free assumptions about what other editors know, edit, and care about, this result was only to be expected. Cambridge deserves a new header. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Cambridge

Suppose a reader wants a Cambridge in the United States, but doesn't know which one. First of all, since we have articles on at least seventeen of them, excluding Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, if that's all he knows, there's a limited amount we can do for him.

But solvitur ambulando; if he searches on Cambridge, he will get to that article, which is about Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, which he will immediately see is in England. He will see two links: one to Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is the most well known (and so most likely to be what he wants. The other link leads to Cambridge (disambiguation), which has a list of the American Cambridges.

If the name of the state means nothing to him, his only way of finding the article he wants is to plow through the list (or invent other search terms, depending on what he knows about the American Cambridge). That is true no matter what system of nomenclature we invent. We at least give him the list.

  • Some might call for making Cambridge, United States a redirect to the dab (also Cambridge, Canada; Cambridge, Australia; Cambridge, England which are also ambiguous). I have no problem with this either; but actually examining them shows that one points to a particular town (as primary usage, which it probably is), one does go to the dab, and one goes to a dab for that country only. If anyone feels like straightening this out for every ambiguous placename in the world, more power to them; let us know what method you're using. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

City (Higher political division)

City (Country)